phd mentoring techniques
When it comes to doctoral students, there are two issues for faculty: 1. Should you agree to be an adviser? and 2. How should you train people?
Agreeing to be an adviser: Overall, my opinion is that every student who can demonstrate that they can finish a dissertation should have an adviser. The student needs to show an ability to independently generate competent work. If the student can’t do that, the department needs some clear signals early on – a failed qualifying exam, strong criticism of the master’s thesis, and so forth.
If a student is in good standing, then you should accept a student as long as you aren’t overburdened. Even though I am still early in my career, I feel no problem accepting any student who asks for help. My belief is that as long as I am qualified and not overextended, I have an obligation to help a student complete their degree.
Even though I have an open policy, that doesn’t mean that just anyone can sign up. I expect students to treat their doctoral dissertation seriously. So I usually make most students do some task, like a literature review, or prepare some of their own data for analysis before I officially sign up. My experience is that if you can’t do that simple task in a timely fashion, it’s unlikely that you can finish the degree.
Technique: I train graduate students in the way that we would train anyone else: repetition. I encourage frequent meetings that are focused on doing specific tasks, like prepping data, making a table, or writing up field notes. I also encourage the completion of concrete tasks like preparing a paper for journal submission.
Philosophically, I believe that a lot of doctoral training is ritualistic. The real test of academia is blind peer review. The faster you get to it, the better. The implication is that I place little weight on proposals, defenses, and so forth. If a student can push a paper through the arduous publication process, the dissertation and its rituals will take care of themselves. This doesn’t mean that I’ll accept a junky dissertation. What it does mean is that I encourage publication first because it is the core skill of the academic profession.
Finally, I make sure to have a constant, non-stop, conversation with students about their career goals. If they are interested in a teaching intensive career, then I don’t worry too much about journal placement. If they want to compete for research or elite liberal arts positions, they’ll need to focus early and hard on publication.
That’s my formula: focus on publication quality research from the get go; constant interaction; and pegging outputs to career goals.
Experienced advisers are encouraged to relate their training strategies in the comments.
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I will certainly agree with two of your points, Fabio. There is way too much ritual, particularly with respect to which (and whose) courses a student should take, and that preparation for successful publication is paramount.
I have had one other significant element to nearly all decisions regarding advising: I nearly always pay for the research assistantship that supports the student during the dissertation period. Often, I agree to pay the student from the point they enter the program with the implied contract that they will write their dissertation with me. For every student that I have advised without footing the bill, I have paid three assistantships for other faculty members’ doctoral candidates. So I have had to find external funding for about $1 million in RA funds since 1998. So I have a significant sympathy for Fabio’s focus on publications and no patience for students who enter a state of estivation after spring prelim exams. Plus, I have motivational tools other than praise to keep the research engine running…
I follow two procedures with all doctoral students. After the first year, I discuss courses that remain to be taken for (a) completing department requirements, (b) filling the toolbox for the dissertation research, and (c) credential building. We actively negotiate over the number and timing of these courses subject to a plan that gets one paper completed before the topic defense. Side issues in the negotiation include funding to attend professional meetings to present full or partial papers and enrolling in a teaching improvement workshop. At the close of the topic defense, the second procedure is research backwardation. When do you wish to finish and get a real job? When would the dissertation need be completed and delivered to the committee? When would the writing, analysis, modeling, data collection, and conceptual development need to be completed to meet that deadline? So… how many months behind are you now? For the student writing the three-essay dissertation, the questions vary somewhat, but the interrogation follows a similar pattern.
Randy
May 22, 2012 at 2:09 am
As a junior professor, I found the 3rd and 5th year review research statements (and even the short, yearly ones) were extremely helpful tools for guiding my research program. Sitting down and writing a condensed statement of what I had accomplished in the year and how that contributed to my research (and teaching) trajectory, and how/if I was changing direction…this was extremely useful. So, starting in the first year of independent research (usually, the MA thesis), students that work with me are required to write one of these. As years accumulate, these eventually take the form of a research statement and/or cover letter text for job applications. The goal is that they will learn several skills by doing this, the least important of which is how to complete bureaucratic paperwork.
And they do turn them in to me. Helpful when I eventually write letters. Even more helpful in our end-of-the-year and start-of-the-year planning sessions. And, of course, it breeds independence.
Jenn Lena
May 22, 2012 at 6:04 pm