Interacting With Students
Especially for a new advisor, setting the right tone for student interactions is a difficult task. Different students
respond best to different approaches -- and, of course, different advisors have different personal styles. Some of
the tradeoffs that have to be made in each advisor-student relationship are:
1.Amount of direction: self-directed/hands-off vs. ``spoon-feeding'' topics and research projects.
2.Personal interactions and psychological support: do they want advice on career, family, and the like? Are
you willing and able to give it, or to find someone else to advise them?
3.Amount and type of criticism: general directions vs. specific suggestions for improvement.
4.Frequency of interaction: daily vs. once a semester.
It helps to establish regular meeting times and to discuss expectations (both yours and your students') about what
can and should be accomplished during these meetings. Encourage them to develop relationships with other
faculty members, students, and colleagues, to get a different perspective and to get feedback you may not be able
to give.
To improve the atmosphere of your interactions:
1.Meet over lunch or coffee to make interactions more relaxed and less stressful.
2.Strive to maintain an open, honest relationship. Respect your students as colleagues.
3.Tell them if you think they're asking for too much or too little time or guidance.
Advisors should be aware of both long-term and short-term needs. What should the student's goals over the next
few years be? Help your student identify ways that the two of you -- as a team -- can meet these goals. Advise the
student on the criteria for a successful qualifying exam, thesis proposal, and dissertation. Help prepare the student
for a future research career.
In the short term, a good advisor will work with students to set priorities and to find a balance between doing
research, reading, writing, satisfying TA and RA duties, publishing, and coursework. Although advisors may not
be able to give advice on all administrative aspects of graduate school, they should at least know the appropriate
people to refer students to for assistance with degree requirements, funding, and so on.
When you meet with your students, pay attention to them. Try to help them to identify their interests, concerns,
and goals, not just how can they meet what *you* see as good interests, concerns, and goals. Know what they're
working on, and what you discussed last time. Take notes during meetings and review them if you have to.
Give them productive feedback, not just a noncommittal ``ok, sure'' or a destructive ``why on earth do you want to
do that?'' Remember that your students are still learning. If you tell them that a problem they're interested in has
already been explored by Professor X, make sure you follow up with a reference that they have access to, and a
discussion as to whether the problem remains a worthwhile area to work on, or whether there are new open issues
raised by Professor X's work, at the next meeting.
When reviewing a student's paper or proposal, write comments on the paper itself: verbal comments aren't as
useful. Give the feedback promptly, or it won't be much help. See the section on feedback for suggestions about
giving useful comments. Don't just wait until they hand you something to read: insist on written drafts of
proposals, papers, etc. Help them develop their rough ideas into publishable papers. Give them specific, concrete
suggestions for what to do next, especially if they seem to be floundering or making little progress.
Advisor-student relationships can break down if the advisor is setting goals that are too high or too low, or if the
advisor is exploiting the student to meet the advisor's needs, not the student's. In my opinion, it is never
appropriate to develop an intimate relationship with one of your own students. If this should happen, you should not continue to advise them (whether the relationship continues or not).
Encourage your students to choose a topic that you're *both* interested in and that you're knowledgeable about (or
very interested in learning more about). Make sure that they have the appropriate background to understand the
problem, and that the methodology and solution they identify are appropriate and realistic. Give them pointers to
useful references and help them find them (this can be a mysterious, difficult process for graduate students). Make
sure they're aware of other researchers and labs who are doing similar work, and if possible, arrange for them to
visit these labs or meet the researchers at seminars or conferences.
Women faculty often feel obligated to mentor every woman student in the department, attend every committee
meeting, and get involved in every debate, whether they want to or not. While you can't solve all of the problems
in the world, you can at least make a difference by giving other women (and men, for that matter) the sense that
you do care, and that you think women's issues are important, even if you don't have time (or the inclination) to
get involved with every problem.
Becoming Part of the Research Community
One of the most important things a graduate students should do is to become established as part of the research
community. Your advisor can help with this process by funding conference travel, encouraging you to publish
research results early, collaborating on joint publications, introducing you to colleagues, and promoting your work.
In turn, you can make yourself more visible by participating in conferences and workshops, publishing papers on
your work, and meeting and maintaining contact with colleagues.
Attending Conferences
Attending conferences and workshops is valuable whether you present a paper or not. Some of the reasons to do
so are:
1.You'll meet people and have a chance to discuss your ideas and to hear theirs.
2.You'll get a good sense of what the current state of research is, and will learn more about how to write
conference papers and give talks (sometimes by counterexample).
3.You'll probably realize that your ideas are more significant, relatively speaking, than you thought. A
common reaction is ``I could write a better paper than this!''
If you're giving a talk you'll gain even more visibility, and will have an opportunity to make an impression on
other researchers. Some tips for preparing your talk to make this impression as positive as possible:
1.Give a practice talk, especially if you tend to get stage fright. Be sure to invite people who will give you
constructive, but useful, feedback.
2.Make sure your talk fits in the time slot allocated. There's nothing worse than a speaker who rushes through
the last ten slides, or skips from the middle of the talk to the conclusion. A good rough rule is to allocate
2-3 minutes per slide, on average.
3.It's better to be somewhat abstract than to get bogged down in technical details -- but be sure you give
enough detail to make a convincing case. Your paper should fill in the missing details, so that people can
read it to get a more in-depth understanding. Know your audience: you'll have to give more background
to a general audience, and more technical detail to audiences that are very familiar with the field of
research you're discussing.
4.Use examples and pictures to illustrate and clarify your ideas.
5.Learn by observation: try to imitate qualities of talks that you like, and avoid things that other speakers do
that bother you. 6.Talk about your ideas informally whenever you get the chance, so that the talk will come more naturally
and, hopefully, you'll have a chance to respond to and think about questions that might get asked at the
talk.
7.Make sure your slides are readable and as simple as possible. Never put up a slide with tiny text and say ``I
know you can't read this, but...''
8.Try to relax. Don't read from a script or word-for-word from your slides, and don't talk too fast. Be
confident: you know more about your work (flaws and all) than anyone else.