Questions tagged [supervision]
Questions relating to academic supervision, which is broadly defined as the supervisory relationship between advisors and their students.
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What are the pros and cons of being co-supervised?
Are there any advantages or disadvantages in having two supervisors instead of one? Why would a graduate student want to do this or avoid this?
The context is in an MA where students usually have one ...
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Regret after not being able to solve a problem that my supervisor did easily
I'm a first year PhD student and I was asked to think about a problem last week and I tried to work out some examples, did some computations, but I wasn't successful. Basically, I didn't really make ...
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Dealing with a PhD student reneging on an agreement to appear in social media
Inspired by this question, I have a similar but somehow different problem.
I recently assumed a tenure-track position. One of my strategies for a visible start is to have a strong presence in social ...
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How do project supervisors address the "freeloading" problem in group projects?
I am currently leading a three person team to tackle an undergrad engineering project that involves several parts. I am responsible for data analysis using sophisticated computer algorithms, another ...
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How many PhD students are too many?
I'm a new assistant professor in the UK in Electrical engineering. I'm in the process of setting up my lab and I work in a "hot" area. Thus, I have the chance of getting good students funded by ...
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How should I take a potential PhD supervisor's age into account, when planning to follow PhD with habilitation?
I plan to apply for PhD in Finance/Statistics next semester, and hence searched for potential supervisors.
An issue I have is that many interesting candidates are above age 60, and in Germany ...
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How to train students to write high-quality research papers?
As someone supervising postgrad students, I wonder what is the best way to train these students to write high-quality research papers?
The best way seems to be through coauthorship but ...
On the ...
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Inadmissible theorems in research
One of my engineering friends told me how e once had to take a make-up calculus I exam due to being hospitalised and so self-studied a lot of the missed topics. For the make-up exam, e used L'Hôpital'...
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How can a researcher in his early career attract good PhD students?
As stated by the title, I want to know what a researcher in his early career, i.e., having not had any graduated PhD student yet, can do to attract good candidates. The reason I am asking this ...
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What are the risks and benefits of being the first PhD of a new supervisor?
I am interested in a PhD project which will be supervised by somebody who has never supervised a PhD student before. In fact, this research group is not yet completely established. On their website ...
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How to have productive meetings with Ph.D supervisor
I am a Ph.D. student in theoretical computer science. I meet my research supervisor once a week for around 2 hours. I prepare some of my research and try to present in front of him. I always try to ...
user85319
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'Virtual' postdoc (in math)
Assume that a given postdoctoral position does not require teaching/laboratory.
Are there postdoc positions for someone who wishes to stay in his/her country and just be in touch with the post-doc ...
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If supervisor has no expertise in your research work, is it possible to do a PhD under that supervisor?
In my PhD, I am assigned mathematical modeling topics and my supervisor's work is related to mathematical biology. But I don't want to work in mathematical biology. Because actually there is not so ...
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PhD Thesis based on published articles on different topics
I am in 3rd year of PhD and I was suppose to graduate after 1 year, but suddenly due to some unknown reason my adviser gave me 2 months to write my PhD dissertation. He said I have published 7 SCI ...
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PhD: When to quit and move on?
I am a second year PhD student at a technical / interdisciplinary lab in Europe wondering when to quit and leave a seemingly unbearable situation behind.
My supervisor (a young-ish professor) mostly ...
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How to explain to a student that it is common to include a supervisor as a co-author?
In my field of research, it is common to include a supervisor as a co-author of a student's PhD research related papers. A supervisor mainly contributes by helping to improve the writing of a paper, ...
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I ghosted my previous supervisor for 15 days. How to improve my situation?
TL;DR: I ghosted (i.e. suddenly ceased communication with no explanation) my previous supervisor for 2 weeks when I had to do some minor final job regarding to my already finished thesis work due to ...
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Do professors get paid for supervising students?
Do professors get paid for supervising PhD students / honours student's projects?
If so, typically how much?
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Postdoc that refuses to follow the terms of her contract
I am supervising a research group. Each year, our institution offers several four years postdoc positions, and one year ago I told a friend of mine to apply to it because we work in very similar ...
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My current PI is telling me that I am a very shy person and he is really pissed off, what I should do?
Today in the lab we had a birthday, I had participated, but not so much as I feel anxious in crowded areas. I felt very shy and that's true, so I withdrew from the party after 15 minutes and wished ...
user103209
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Supervising a research student with attention problems - what can I do to help the student be more independent?
When supervising a research student with ADD or a similar problem, I can help the student be more productive by adjusting the way I give instructions:
Propose one task at a time: Instead of saying "...
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PhD students publish without supervisors – how does it work?
In my field (experimental physics) the supervision of PhD students works roughly like that: freshmen come to the lab, they are given tasks, then they do experiments, discuss the results with their ...
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Is there a conflict of interest when the supervisor and co-supervisor are husband and wife?
I have been co-supervised by my primary supervisor's wife. Suffice to say that this has been problematic where both have different research interests. Each asks me to do different jobs and they often ...
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How should I stay in professional contact with former supervisors and/or colleagues?
I want to ask if anyone still keeps in touch with former supervisors and/or colleagues from previous universities and how to do it in a professional way.
I want to keep in touch with them for not ...
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How to keep track of deliverables for supervised students when you supervise many students?
Background: In my area, academics often supervise a large number of students (e.g., 10, 15, 20 students). Many of these students are doing a small thesis as part of either their fourth year or ...
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How much time should be allocated to supervising undergraduate researchers?
I recently asked this question about how many office hours per week are common for undergraduate lecturers but then I just read this one about supervising research done by undergrads. This got me ...
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How to ask for a co-supervisor? (master's program etiquette)
I'm finishing up the first year of my master's program, heading into the second starting September. I had proposed a topic to my (then potential, since confirmed) supervisor in October and we agreed ...
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How to contact a prospective supervisor for undergraduate research at another university?
There are many helpful posts explaining how a hopeful graduate student should contact a potential supervisor (example 1, example 2). However, I cannot find any advice about how an undergraduate should ...
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What to do when your student is convinced that he will be the next Einstein?
As an adviser, I have found it to be a detrimental motive for a student to focus solely on surpassing Einstein in achievement, for many reasons. One student in particular has busied himself with the ...
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How to supervise a bad PhD student
I am a postdoc helping in the supervision of a PhD student who is finishing his 2nd year now. This is in Europe, meaning the student came in with a MSc degree and these 2 years have been of research. "...
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Advisor tries to reproduce my results to ensure my honesty. Is it the norm?
I am a M.Sc. student in Machine Learning, about to finish my thesis this month. My advisor wants me to meet him in person to reproduce my results under his control. It is obvious that the main reason ...
user35129
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Should I report a PhD student’s incompetence to their supervisor?
I had a short exchange of mails with a PhD student who wished to ask some questions about a paper of mine, which was troublesome in many respects:
The student had a blatant lack of basic knowledge ...
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Are PhD supervisors responsible for informing students about legal issues pertaining to research?
After an extreme amount of effort, I am now in possession of a very large dataset of human experiments which is required for my research. However, after speaking with some of my colleagues about ...
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How to ask for feedback from research students on my supervision abilities?
As the lone experimentalist in my group, I end up supervising most of the students (M.S., B.S. and high school) who do experimentation-focused research in my lab.
I am always trying to improve my ...
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How to deal with unnecessary stress introduced by the supervisor?
I am doing my PhD in a high prestige UK university.
I am finishing my second year and I have funding for three years in total.
I have already two papers finished (pending to be published) and ...
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Is it fair to my PhD student if I ask them to do "miscellaneous" work for a paper they're not going to be a coauthor of?
I've started work as an assistant professor recently,
and my first PhD student has just started her first semester.
I'm working on a paper with my collaborators
which is almost ready to submit.
I am ...
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How to address in-group bullying without compromising PhD/career?
I've been bullied by my supervisor and other members of my research group for the past couple of years.
Some of the things which have indicated bullying include snide remarks being made during group ...
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1.5 years later, how to make sure unprofessional behaviour by former mentor has consequences?
I was a post doc at a large US university for a year and after took another postdoc position in my home country. My mentor was a tenure track assistant professor. It pretty soon became clear that ...
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Team member has done the work but won't write it up - what to do?
One of the people in my group does very good work and is very productive. This person generates publishable results but, instead of writing them up, jumps to the next problem. I have been encouraging ...
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Failing postdoc?
After a successful PhD in computer science (including some awards from top conferences, internship at top industry research labs, and a good number of citations to my ~15 papers) in a top-10 US school,...
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Is it acceptable to require a student to use the supervisor's preferred software/tools?
I'm about to supervise my first bachelor student and I'm not quite sure what is acceptable and what is not.
The thesis will contain math formulas, illustrations, images, graphs and tables - like any ...
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My PhD supervisor doesn't want to add his name on a paper
Here are the details:
I'm a Ph.D. student in mathematics.
A year ago, my supervisor ask me to try to generalize some results, saying that this "question" is given by one of the famous ...
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What should I do if someone submit a review of a manuscript in journal system sooner than I know and I already prepared a detailed review?
I am a Ph.D. student. My supervisor frequently tells me if you want to do a review for journals, login into my account and perform the review. He never reviews any paper. He is very lazy and I have to ...
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What are the key components of being an effective supervisor of undergraduate researchers?
Quite a few tenure-track job ads I've come across recently have mentioned supervising research of undergraduate students as one of the position responsibilities specifically. I have had plenty of ...
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What to do when you hear many bad stories about your supervisor on the first day of your PhD?
Today was the first day of my PhD. It's a very prestigious institution and I was extremely excited to start. However, it seems there is a general feeling of discontentment with people in the group and ...
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What do supervisors have to gain from a success or failure of a PhD student?
I'm finishing a really messed up dissertation. Maybe decent in some sense, but all the PhD has been done without following any of the supposed methodology and criteria. Since I'm in a sort of arm ...
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As a postdoc, how to deal with supervisor who keeps trying to involve my student in other projects?
I would appreciate very much an advice on the case which I will describe after a short intro about myself. Such introduction is not really necessary for the matter of question, but I hope it can ...
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Dealing with an advisor who is not interested in publishing
My advisor is a full professor nearing retirement age. Although he does not seem to be planning to retire anytime soon; he has this "been there/done that" attitude toward publications. He says that he ...
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Order of authors in a paper
I have worked on few research labs and performed research as a master's student with PhD students and faced similar issues.
It has been papers that I have contributed most of the work for that paper,...
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Does recording video of a scientific presentation violate the privacy of a PhD student?
The answers to this popular question were somewhat controversial, but many including @dan-romik whose answer was highly upvoted mentioned that recording a video is a violation of personal privacy and ...
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