Report a Problem

Creating an environment of mutual respect in graduate school:

What should you expect and how to report concerns when something goes wrong?

Faculty expect to be treated with dignity and respect and graduate students should be treated the same way. Experience teaches us that graduate school can be complicated for many different reasons. For instance, there can be conflicts, which can leave graduate students feeling frustrated, angry, and powerless.

Most importantly, if you are in immediate danger for any reason, call 911.

Let us be clear. No student should be subjected to sexual harassment, sexual abuse, or discrimination. If this is a matter of sexual harassment, sexual abuse, or discrimination, contact the Office of Institutional Equity (www.oie.ucf.edu).

Other kinds of behavior can also be destructive and are not tolerated at UCF. We hope you never encounter these issues, but know that if you do, you have options. This page lists some commonly reported concerns among graduate students nationwide. If you have or are experiencing these behaviors, you are encouraged to report them by filling out this form. It gives you the opportunity to report anonymously or you may give us your contact information for a Dean or Director from the College of Graduate Studies to reach out to you. We will keep your concern confidential unless you instruct us otherwise or as required by law.

It is preferable that your concerns be addressed with your graduate program director or the chair of your department.  However, we recognize that you may not be able to do that. In such cases, the College of Graduate Studies is here to help.

Below are some examples of mistreatment, identified by The Graduate Student Mistreatment Panel at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (from: https://webcommons.mssm.edu/mistreatmentresourcepanel/):

• Threatening sanctions for reasons other than poor progress, performance, or unprofessional/unethical behavior (e.g., threatening to remove your name as co-author from a publication, threatening to write a poor letter of recommendation, threatening to “send you home” if you are an international student)
• Asking you to perform non-academic tasks, such as doing their child’s homework, or taking care of their pets while they are on vacation
• Requiring unreasonable work hours without an explicit agreement from you (e.g., holidays, in between semesters, the middle of the night)
• Threatening or engaging in harmful behaviors such as throwing things at you, hitting you, ridiculing you, or yelling at you
• Requiring potentially hazardous lab work without proper protection or supervision
• Threatening to decrease or end assistantship or fellowship funding due to you not complying with requests that are harmful, unreasonable, or non-academic

We hope that no graduate student at UCF experiences the items identified by the Mistreatment Panel at Mount Sinai or other forms of mistreatment. However, if you have a concern, again here is the UCF link to report it, you can report it here.

If you are not ready to report your concern to the College of Graduate Studies, you may still wish to have a confidential, off-the-record, conversation with someone regarding your concern, you can speak with the Ombuds Office. They offer a variety of services such as listening, identifying appropriate options, opening channels of communication, connecting you with support resources, assisting with concerns and questions regarding policies and much more. Speaking to the Ombuds Office is not a report or formal complaint to the university but they can help you with navigating the challenges you may be experiencing in a safe space. (www.ombuds.ucf.edu).

For other types of concerns or issues to report, UCF has a centralized reporting webpage available at this link (https://www.ucf.edu/contact-ucf/reporting/).