For Advisor

• In order to be a good advisor, you have to relate to your graduate students as individuals, not just as anonymous research assistants or tickets to tenure and co-authored publications.
  • Work with all of your graduate students, not just those whom you feel most comfortable with, or who are interested in the problems you're most excited about.
  • 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.
    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.
  • Try to get to know your students personally and professionally. Help them to identify their strengths and weaknesses, to build on the former, and to work on overcoming the latter.
  • 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.

  • Attempt to understand student concerns from a student point of view.
     
• Guiding students' research:
  • Select a topic
    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.

    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.
     

  • Perform the research
    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.
     
  • Evaluate it critically
    Give them honest evaluations of their work and performance: don't just assume that they know how they're doing and what you think of them.
     
  • Write the dissertation.
    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.
     
• Meetins:
  • 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.
  • Listen constructively, attempting to hear all aspects of students' expressed problems.
  • To improve the atmosphere of your interactions:
    • Meet over lunch or coffee to make interactions more relaxed and less stressful.
    • Strive to maintain an open, honest relationship. Respect your students as colleagues.
    • Tell them if you think they're asking for too much or too little time or guidance.
       
• Although guiding your students' research is normally viewed as the central task of an advisor, the other roles are also critical to their long-term success.
  • Getting them involved in the wider research community: introducing them to colleagues, collaborating on research projects with them, funding conference travel, encouraging them to publish papers, nominating them for awards and prizes.
  • Finding a position after graduation: helping them to find and apply for postdoctoral positions, faculty positions, and/or jobs in industry; supporting their applications with strong recommendations; and helping them to make contacts.
     
• 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.