Stephanie is the department chair for Mechanical Engineering. Her duties include faculty and graduate student payroll and budget administration. Stephanie’s administrative assistant, Adam, calls her to inquire whether she is aware of the rollout of travel restrictions issued by the federal government and its potential impacts on graduate employees. She was not. Adam explained that the federal administration would shortly announce a formal travel ban that would prohibit immigration of Iranians to the United States.
Stephanie was not aware of the implications of such a ban. Adam suggested that a ban could create a precarious situation for the department’s Iranian graduate students and was unsure whether the ban would prohibit their travel to and from Iran. Stephanie began to explore the matter with Human Resources and also began discussing it with staff.
While she was collecting information, she confirmed that the Iranian graduate students were uneasy about the status of their Visas. The students also confided that they had overheard the lab’s principal investigators strategizing about federally funded projects and expressing concern whether they would be renewed for funding the next academic year. The students had also heard that faculty were ruminating whether they should avoid selecting Iranian students during the current graduate recruitment cycle.
In addition to the student’s concerns for their professional and economic stability, Stephanie became more aware of the students’ personal distress and concern for family and friends around the world.
Stephanie recognizes she has much more information to collect. She decides that as a short-term solution, it was in her power to convene her faculty and graduate students, open dialogue and use the space to affirm her support for the Iranian students and also elevate the concern so that the institution is aware of the impact and can have a more unified and campuswide response and action plan.
- The Issue: A federal travel ban is threatening the academic, professional and personal security of Iranian graduate students. The ensuing fears related to impacts on federal funding is resulting in ambivalence about the recruitment and selection of future graduate students from Iran.
- The Deliberation: Adam brings the community and policy conflicts resulting from the travel ban to Stephanie’s attention. She subsequently checks in with students, faculty and administrators to better understand the policy shift and consider the impacts on her students and academic program.
- The Growth: Stephanie raises her consciousness to the policy matter at hand and the adverse impacts on her graduate students and program operations. She is able to devise a short-term response to communicate support for her students and also begins organizing similar support from institutional leaders.