Choosing a PhD advisor

A recent blog thread prompted me to read an article by Bruce Alberts, Editor-in-Chief of Science "On Becoming a Scientist" and post some thought on choosing a PhD advisor here.

He starts: “The exact project pursued for a Ph.D. degree is not nearly as important as finding the best place for learning how to push forward the frontier of knowledge as an independent investigator.” How true. Some advice summarized from the article:

1) Choose a research group led by a person with high scientific and ethical standards. Have they published frequently and in prestigious journals? Do they have NSF-supported research projects? Search for their name on the NSF awards web site;

2) Find an advisor who will pay close attention to your development as a scientist (a small research group is perhaps better than a large group in which your interests can get lost). Talk to current students in that group and discover whether they have had conversations with their advisor about their future career. Have they been encouraged to present their research at conferences, write papers and grant proposals? Are there multiple faculty doing research in related fields? That could create a supportive community of faculty and grad students in which you might thrive. Are there regular departmental seminars on topics of interest to you by visiting scientists? Does the research group meet regularly to discuss research progress, etc.? The upshot: is there a community that will provide an intellectually-stimulating and supportive environment?;

3) Choose an advisor that will provide you with enough guidance to prevent you from wasting time on nonproductive pursuits, while giving you the freedom to innovate and learn from your own mistakes. How hands-on or hands-off is s/he as an advisor? Is there a chance that you might become enslaved as the mass spec repair dude during your PhD or will you get lots of hands-on experience in the lab while you're doing your research and walk away 5 years later with important skills;

4) Choose your research project well (this is a tricky one as it's hard to see the forest for the trees when you're fresh out of your undergraduate studies): “ambitious enough to be important and exciting, innovative enough to make unique contributions likely, and nevertheless have a good chance of producing valuable results”. Have this conversation with your advisor when you're choosing your project.

5) The choice of a postdoctoral research group is the place to establish yourself with your long-term career in mind – you should choose a lab where you can acquire skills that complement those you already have.

6) Finally, I'll add that you should consider whether the faculty member is near retirement or whether they are just starting to grow their research program (what year did they get their PhD and do some math) - are they actively doing exciting research? have they published recently? do they have active grants through NSF? Some mid- or late-career faculty might drift into administrative roles that take them away from their research. Very new/young faculty might be sinking all of their time into starting up a new lab or teaching brand new courses and not have much time for advising, they might not have external grant funding yet to support their research, or their research groups might be nonexistent or very small (perhaps not the most supportive environment). At the same time, very new/young faculty might feel more energized by their research and still have a fire in their belly that could lead you down exciting research roads (at the very least, if they are pre-tenure [Assistant Professors in their first 6 years of their positions] they will still have to work very hard to be productive...).

There is an awful lot of luck, knowing the right people, and being in the right place at the right time in becoming a successful scientist. You can control who you know - your research mentors. Choose well.

On student-advisor perceptions

A recent post on the Chronicle of Higher Education relates to my last blog entry about what professors actually do. I've reproduced the article below because it goes beyond just what professors DO and delves into the student-advisor relationship and expectations. It also touches on graduate student pay - something that is normal for PhD students at research universities (where there is institutional support) but that relies on grant support at other institutions (a topic that I will no doubt blog about in the future). For now, I will say that my expectations of graduate students are the same whether or not I am able to pay a student from a grant (though I have more and firmer expectations of graduate students that I am supporting) - ultimately a research project is the grad student's project, not mine, and success or failure lies quite firmly in grad student's hands. I hope this isn’t true, but sometimes I wonder if graduate students doing research with me think they are doing me a series of favors – if so, that perception needs to change because (and I hope this doesn’t sound too harsh) I could do the work much more efficiently on my own. Grad students are research trainees and my job as an advisor is to help grad students do their best possible work, and if they’re successful, go on to a Ph.D. program.

Planet of the Professors

Why do doctoral students and their advisers have such different views about the graduate-research experience?

By FEMALE SCIENCE PROFESSOR

"It is well known that professors and undergraduates exist on different planets with respect to their expectations and views about educational issues (like grades). That may relate to the difference in their ages, or in the intensity of their academic focus. Those factors are less pronounced in the relationships between professors and graduate students, who, nonetheless, also exist on different planets and have different views about the graduate-research experience.

For example, some graduate students, including research assistants, believe that they are exploited, employed at low wages to work long hours accomplishing various tasks that benefit the research endeavors of an adviser who doesn't really care about them and whose own "work" may not be apparent to the student. I don't doubt that there are cases in which that description applies to a particular professor, but it's not an accurate description of the typical graduate experience, at least not in the physical sciences with which I am familiar. It's an incomplete and inaccurate description for at least three reasons.

1) Not cheap labor. Graduate-student stipends may be low compared with other employment options, particularly in science and engineering fields, but students are not "cheap" labor for advisers. When salary, benefits, and, in some cases, tuition are factored in, graduate students cost a lot, and most or all of that cost may come out of the adviser's research grants.

Graduate students don't see those additional costs; they just see their modest salaries. In fact, graduate-student salaries and their related costs may largely consume grants. Expenses for the actual research may be the smallest component of the budget.

From the adviser's point of view, therefore, students are getting paid a decent (living) wage while working toward their (tuition-free) graduate degree, and doing interesting research in the process. A student, however, may focus on how hard the work is for not a lot of money in a stressful environment that may be populated by some intense and/or difficult people. If the student has or wants to have a family, the stipend may seem even smaller. Financial pressures may be a source of discontent on both sides because each has a different perspective on the "cost" of the research.

2) Training time. Most students do not arrive in graduate school knowing how to do research. It takes time to learn. Unlike most postdocs (who have already successfully attained a Ph.D.), some graduate students never learn.

If the training time and the uncertainty that a graduate student will do well in research are factored in, one could reasonably conclude that using students is an extremely inefficient way for an adviser to conduct a research program. A student may need time to adjust to a new environment in which expectations and skills are different from those in a typical undergraduate program. At first, the student may be taken aback by the culture of criticism, discussion, and debate of graduate seminars, research-group meetings, and research presentations.

Some students can handle all of that and some can't — no matter how smart they are. In fact, from the professor's point of view, the most efficient way to conduct a research program would be to hire nonstudent workers who are already trained and who would stay in the job on a long-term basis rather than leaving just at the point when they finally know what they are doing. That would be more efficient even than hiring postdocs who only stay a couple of years and then move on.

That would be fine if efficiency were the only thing that mattered, but a completely efficient scenario of trained workers doesn't sound appealing to me, nor does working in isolation. Most of us science professors aren't here to manage a group of technicians, or even to work alone.

I do like to get results, and my fondest wish is that students who are paid on a grant will get some results, for their sake and mine. But I also expect a bit of inefficiency along the way. By results, I mean data, a talk, a paper, or a new grant proposal. We need such results to keep the interconnected system of research and graduate education functioning. Advisers may be more focused on certain important deadlines (including those involving tenure and promotion decisions) than students and may transmit (without much explanation) their stress and sense of urgency to their students.

In that context, the concept of efficiency doesn't capture the most valuable outcomes of teaching students how to do research, whether the teaching involves direct instruction or letting a student loose on a problem. The most valuable outcomes are discovery, insight, and inspiration (and having fun in the process). Can those be taught? Years of advising lead me to an unsatisfying answer: Sometimes.

3) The way we work. Most students, even quite senior graduate students, have little idea of what faculty members do all day. I have heard students complain that they do all the work while their advisers do nothing. I am always skeptical that a professor managing a research group at a research university is really doing nothing all day.

There are some periods of time, including entire academic terms, when I don't have time to do any actual research myself. I suppose in some respects I am doing nothing during those times — nothing other than teaching, serving on committees, reviewing manuscripts and proposals, writing manuscripts and proposals (an activity I count as research), dealing with budgets and accountants involved in grants management, writing letters of recommendation, attending conferences (preparing and giving talks), and a host of other random things that seem to pop up every day and consume my time.

When doctoral students graduate and become faculty members, perhaps after doing postdoctoral research, a common refrain is "I didn't know I would have to spend so much time doing ... [fill in blank with administrative or advising task]."

We advisers could do a better job of teaching our students exactly what professors really do. That might result in less dissatisfaction at a perceived imbalance in workload between students and their advisers. Students should also be more aware of the environment in which they are working, although some of what is involved in being a professor and adviser of a research group is difficult to anticipate or understand until you actually do it.

I like having a research group, and I like working with students. I enjoy doing research, discovering things, developing new ideas, and communicating the results, and I like trying to teach others how to do all of that as well. It takes a lot of time and energy for both adviser and student, even when things go well and even when the student thinks he or she is doing most of the work.

Some advisers are more involved with their students' research and education than others. Some leave a lot of the day-to-day advising to other members of a research group. Some advisers would prefer to have more "workers" and fewer students, especially advisers who have had a lot of negative experiences with unproductive graduate students. It can be extremely frustrating and demoralizing to (try to) work with a dysfunctional grad student.

I think, however, that most of us advisers have enough positive experiences to balance out the negative ones — even if the negative ones are rather spectacular and make for better stories.

By working with many different students over the years, we can achieve a reasonably upbeat perspective on the overall experience. In contrast, most graduate students work with only one or two advisers, so a single bad experience can be crushing.

Most of us science-professor types at research universities advise graduate students, for better or worse. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. Successful adviser-student interactions require of both parties a balance between being patient and being assertive, keeping overt complaining to a minimum, and realizing that what seems like insensitive or strange behavior or laziness in the other might have a reasonable explanation.

Graduate students and professors alike are continually amazed at each other's mystifying behavior, so it is not surprising that there are gaps in experiences and expectations between them. But maybe it's not surprising that these misunderstandings exist: My colleagues and I often don't understand each other, either.”