Managing Grant Team Stress and Looking Out for One Another During COVID

Things are hard right now. To the extent that I’m able, I want to help grant teams lower stress and look out for one another and their various communities in the coming months.

I’m thankful to be in community with Ayush Gupta, McKensie Mack, and Vashti Sawtelle, among many other lovely folks. I want to credit conversations with these three in particular in helping me name some of what I’ve named, below.

I’m an evaluator as well as a project manager on various NSF grants in the field of STEM Education research. I’m on a lifelong journey to unlearn too much acculturation into academic productivity culture - a culture that I see causing a great deal of stress on people in this time. If we don’t find ways to lower productivity expectations on folks, we know that the most marginalized in our country will be most affected by that because of how COVID is playing out right now.

I know a lot of PIs and team managers are feeling overwhelmed with everything going on in the world. They want to lower stress for their teams, but aren’t quite sure where to start. To help folks, I wanted to share this list of considerations that grant teams can explore. This is really just me spending a couple of hours trying to put into words the various conversations that I’ve had. It’s not perfect, and I welcome additions to the list and critiques of the framing here.

Here’s some considerations. I’ll note that the ethics of this stuff is really complex! There are a lot of ethical principles that may conflict with one another in working through these considerations. You might also appreciate asking a friend, colleague, consultant, or evaluator to hold some space to co-think with you on these considerations:

  • Identify the project goals and products that are important to team members’ livelihoods as to prioritize them.

  • Consider how grant funds can help the most amount of people meet their basic needs during a time of great unemployment and budget cuts.

  • Consider worst-case scenarios and what the team wants to prioritize ahead of time. The goal would be to avoid a situation where many people fall ill and one person feels they are responsible for meeting all of the goals on the grant that were set pre-COVID. To help, consider setting basic goals and stretch goals. 

  • Consider existing policies for paid time off that can help in two ways: (1) lowering program officer expectations of productivity and (2) supporting personnel in the emotions of working less. The NSF CARES Act is one consideration here. 

  • Consider that there might not be official policy to invoke for paid time off outside of childcare, yet people may be dealing with additional care-taking responsibilities to sick family members, stress, the difficulty of working from home, etc. Are there ways to (similarly to the above bullet) (1) lower program officer expectations of productivity and (2) support personnel in the emotions of being less “productive” on academic product creation? Can grant goals be re-negotiated with the program officer to lower team stress about expectations? I have been hearing some program officers are supportive of this.

  • Many people on teams are facing a question of whether they should lower their % time because they are not feeling as “productive.” Power, privilege, and relative salary rates should be considered here. I’m hearing a lot about people trying to manage their emotions around feeling responsible for work. I wonder if ways of re-framing work can help all team members during this time. Particularly for folks on the lower end of the salary scales, consider how managers/PIs can help them see aspects of working from home as “work that counts.” For instance, Zoom meetings can cause stress in many ways. It is hard on the body to sit at a desk all day. Can personnel be supported to frame recovery time from Zoom meetings as part of paid work? When working an 8-hour work day in a campus office, people typically get coffee with one another, move between buildings, have 20 minute hallway conversations, deal with fire drills, etc. Can personnel consider a “working from home during a pandemic is just different” % of their time that frees up their sense of how long they should be “on” during a day? As a kind of last option, if it helps a person who is financially stable to feel less responsible and lower their stress, I know some faculty feel better not taking planned summer salary so that they can lower the expectations they place on themselves. This may also have the benefit of freeing up money to pay undergraduate researchers who might not have as many on-campus job options during COVID. The ethics of these questions are complex! 

  • Consider grief training for team members to normalize what they experience and how to best help colleagues who are grieving. One space that offers such training is Being Here Human.

  • Consider paying for anti-racism and anti-oppression consulting and/or training for team members, all the more important as COVID amplifies existing systemic oppression.

OK, these are some considerations that I’ve been discussing with people. Here are my ultimate hopes: may we all look out for each other in this time, may we set up structures that shift resources along lines of power and privilege, and may we find moments of peace and acceptance with how life has so suddenly changed.

-Angie