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[pgher]

I'm trying to figure out how to plan travel to an upcoming workshop.  For context, I'm a male TT professor in engineering.  The workshop is close enough to be driving distance (about 5-6 hrs, would take even longer to fly due to connections).  The intent is for the workshop to be student-focused.  I have two papers in the workshop, both with students (different ones).

Student #1 is a male PhD student.  He is nearing graduation.  He has already attended three conferences in the past 15 months.

Student #2 is a female MS student.  She is also nearing graduation.  She is a somewhat weaker student, but OK.  She has never been to a conference.

If I take both students, I can't really ask them to share a hotel room, so I'm a little concerned about the cost.  If I take student #1, I'm afraid of the appearance of favoritism, and I'm not sure how much it would advance his career, given all the other conferences he has attended.  If I take student #2, I'm afraid of the appearance of impropriety (alone in a car together for 10+ hours).  If I go alone, it partly defeats the purpose of the workshop.

What would you do?

[reener06]

Is the workshop at a university or sponsored by one? Can you share a room with male student, but contact workshop organizers to see if there are other females that need to share rooms? Or see if there are any students that need to share rooms? That's what we do in my field, and it turns into a nice bit of networking often. I have a good friend now who when I first roomed with her we had a vague common acquaintance. We now are quite close, and often share rooms at national conferences. I've expanded my networking through her quite a bit.

[crowie]

If you're saying you would take student #2 if she were a man then that means she would be missing an opportunity to advance her career because of her gender, which is extremely unfortunate.  Perhaps you should check with students #1 and #2 to see whether they would be willing to share a hotel room (one with two beds, obviously).  Some people wouldn't be bothered by having an opposite-sex roommate for just a couple of nights. Reener's idea is good too.

[offthemarket]

Do you have colleagues with students in their labs who are going to the meeting?  I have students of mine share rooms with students in other labs all the time.  Or they rent a house or apartment, which is actually cheaper and better.

[pigou]

I would not be comfortable with a student/professor room sharing (by that I mean being part of the arrangement - I don't care what others do). Maybe that's just me, though. As a student, I would not have minded sharing the room with a female student, but I'd imagine men are more comfortable with such an arrangement than women.

Can you make a guess as to their financial ability? They may well be able to afford single rooms, depending on how long the stay is. Especially if they essentially get free transportation. Plus, presenting one's first paper is quite a milestone that ought to be worth something. I wouldn't feel compelled to, but you could ask them if the cost would be an obstacle and maybe subsidize part of it. That would depend on the actual cost and your own situation, of course.

I imagine you've checked with the university whether they're willing to put forward some funding? Are the students part of a national organization (e.g. honors society) that would be willing to pitch in?

[johnr]

It's sad that a student focused workshop doesn't have reasonable room rates for students. Is there a room-share request page on the workshop web site?  I would be hesitant to make the two room together, nor, in my advanced age, do I have any desire to room with students at a conference or workshop. I'm really done with that. Does the department have any student travel funds you can tap into?

If it were me, and if I had no other funding sources or alternatives, I would ask both to attend, I would pay for the gas and pay for the workshop fees, and ask the students to cover their own room and board.  I'm always feeling sorry for how poor my students are, yet they always seem to come up with the scratch for a six week summer course on tropical agriculture in Costa Rica! So perhaps they CAN come up with a few bucks for a hotel room in Columbus, Ohio, or where ever.

That being said, I almost alway have some grant money, or indirect funds that I can tap into for these kinds of things. Taking graduate students to conferences and workshops is hugely important in my field, thus I'm alway squirreling away travel money in some account to use for such occasions.

[systeme_d_]

Check the workshop website for roommate matching, or contact colleagues who are going and ask if their students would like roommates, or contact the workshop facilitator to inquire about other registered members to contact about roommate possibilities.

[donstefano]

I would let them organise it themselves: look, I would like to have both of you at this workshop. Ideally, I put both of you up in a fancy hotel, but I only have xx $. Please figure out what is possible, and I'll pay for it. Let them be creative - if they get along, they might come up with room sharing. Or  one of them may have friends at the conference/in the town. Or perhaps there is some youth hostel nearby?

[txloopnlil]

You have been given many good suggestions about helping students find room shares.   Take both and let them make their own arrangements. Sleeping arrangements & room sharing is complicated and involves prying into the personal lives of students to an uncomfortable degree, so stay out of it.  Students will sort themselves by factors much more complicated than by gender most of the time.

I'm concerned that you are treating your MS student differently on account of gender though.  Anytime a faculty member is alone with a student of ANY gender improper actions could occur or accusations be made.  If you think this is a concern, then you need to avoid being with students of either gender alone.  The simplest thing is to have more than one student on the trip, so take both.  Otherwise you are providing less or different mentoring of your MS student based on her gender. 

I had a post-doc advisor who treated me quite differently than a male post-doc through this same faulty reasoning and it certainly hampered our working relationship and my productivity in that lab, and even the respect level I was accorded by the techs and grad students.  He was  never inappropriate in anyway with a female student, colleague or staff member and was so nice and squeaky-clean he seemed like an Eagle Scout poster boy. However it was quite clear either from some over zealous sexual harassment training, jealous wife or whatever, that he had a paranoia about being alone with female students or post docs that in turn negatively effected his ability to be an good mentor to them. 

My grad. advisor, when there was enough money from grants to help students otherwise not directly budgeted for on the grant, always tried to maximize the number of students who could attend. Money was allocated in this order:

1) group transportation - a car or van rental and even non-presenting students could ride if there was room 2) registration of presenting students in order of imminent job/post doc searches/graduation
3) room/board stipends - which were never enough to cover the cost of the room, much less food, but students were free to spend the money as they needed. 

The advisor left room arrangements totally up to the students and we often found cheaper motels than the conference hotel and/or crammed an illegal number of sleepers/room, or crashed on some friend or family member or even local students' floor to save money. There are often graduate student travel grants available through the department and/or graduate school and or through the society putting on the meeting, and as students we were expected to apply for money through those channels as well.

In my field, a Ph.D student sharing a room (with separate beds) with a same sex faculty member would not get a second look anymore than 2 TT faculty sharing a room would, if the room rates were expensive, but my advisor always joked that not sharing a room at meetings was one of the few good things about being a PI. 

[reener06]

I'm concerned that you are treating your MS student differently on account of gender though.  Anytime a faculty member is alone with a student of ANY gender improper actions could occur or accusations be made.  If you think this is a concern, then you need to avoid being with students of either gender alone.  The simplest thing is to have more than one student on the trip, so take both.  Otherwise you are providing less or different mentoring of your MS student based on her gender. 

I had a post-doc advisor who treated me quite differently than a male post-doc through this same faulty reasoning and it certainly hampered our working relationship and my productivity in that lab, and even the respect level I was accorded by the techs and grad students.  He was  never inappropriate in anyway with a female student, colleague or staff member and was so nice and squeaky-clean he seemed like an Eagle Scout poster boy. However it was quite clear either from some over zealous sexual harassment training, jealous wife or whatever, that he had a paranoia about being alone with female students or post docs that in turn negatively effected his ability to be an good mentor to them. 

This. My advisor had too much sexual harassment training, or something. He's a huge worrywart too. He definitely treats me differently, more 'gingerly' than the males, and we get along pretty well. He also has 2 sons, no daughters, so women seem like a foreign concept to him. It's not that he's against women in the field at all, he's just very concerned that things might seem improper, and that I might bring some type of charges against him. The result? I've been left out of field projects multiple times. Thankfully, I had enough of my own research already set up, but I see this adversely affecting the next female grad student who I'm friends with. He was quite upset when she broke up with her boyfriend b/c to him that meant she couldn't rightly go in the field alone with advisor again--boyfriend was in same field and could go with. Advisor liked the extra help, but in reality he liked how it couldn't be perceived as wrong. Note too his wife is great, very supportive of both female grad students, so jealousy is not an issue there.

Your students are adults, so give them the choice and find funds where possible, and allow them to work it out. Like I said above, this is a potential networking opportunity. We often have students posting to professional listserves looking for roommates at meetings.

[georgiaprof]

Personally, I would pay whatever I had to in order to have a private room.  I would have had to borrow the money at the time, but I much prefer my solitude.  Let them make their own arrangements.  If you are willing to pay some of the cost, let them know that.  Also, let them know what arrangments you have made and if you would be willing to pick them up from another location to drive them to the workshop daily.

[sir_lancelot]

I would also not want to share a room with a student. I would not ask them to room together either. All kinds of things can go wrong and you would be responsible.

You could look at how much money you have available to support them from your funds, ask the department and the university, see if there are funds available from the organizers or from the national society. Then divide the available funds up between the two of them and say "look, this  is how much I am able to support you, I am also giving you free transportation, you organize the rest of it for yourself." Make sure they know how much you want them to go and how important you think it is to present. There is no reason why they can't do some of the footwork to make it happen and pitch in some money if needed.

[pgher]

Thanks for all the advice.  I think I'll figure out a way to take both, given some of these suggestions.

Yes, it's unfortunate that I need to think about this in gendered terms, but I'm a realist.  I'm trying as hard as I can to treat my female advisees the same as male advisees.  (At least part of the difference in this case is terminal MS vs. PhD.)  As long as we're on campus, I can deal with it, and when we go to big conferences, I can deal with it because of the larger numbers.  This is just a little outside my comfort zone.

[anon99]

I wouldn't be comfortable sharing a room with my students regardless of their gender.  As a grad student we often shared rooms to keep costs down; I shared a room with a male grad student-separate beds.  I wouldn't think twice about the car ride, but perhaps I am naive.

As others said, they should have some mechanism in place to find roommates especially if it is a student-focused workshop.

[amewa_silk]

Having shared rooms with my professors on research trips as an undergrad, I advise against it.  If you must travel with your students, I recommend limiting the conversation to professional topics.