phd supervisor meeting agenda

How to prepare for PhD supervision meetings

Oct 14, 2020

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Author: Dennis Riviera

Supervision and doctoral committee meetings are a necessary part of your PhD journey. They are a chance for your supervisors to evaluate the adequacy of your research project and monitor the progress of your work.

Or at least that is what we are usually told, right?

These meetings, however, are more than a mere report of your progress. They are the chance that all PhD students have to discuss their research plan, consider its strengths and weaknesses, and get advice from experienced academics in their field.

In essence, these meetings are essential to help you improve and carry out your studies.

To make the most of them, there are a few important things to remember. In this post, I’ll share them with you.

Hello, Doctor…

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You are responsible for organising the meeting

Make sure you organise your doctoral meeting well in advance and plan your agenda with time-realistic activities. A good way to do this is by rehearsing what you are going to present and then timing yourself.

Additionally, ask yourself if the information you are presenting is key to helping your mentors understand your research project, or if it is unessential. Remember that you want your committee meeting to give you advice, and you can best achieve this by focusing on specific problems or questions. Spending time on irrelevant information might give your supervisors and mentors the impression that their time is not being used effectively.

What should be on your agenda?

This depends on whether you are preparing your first meeting or subsequent ones. If this is your first meeting, it is always wise to allocate some time for brief introductions, especially if you have not yet had the chance to get to know the members of your doctoral committee.

Subsequent meetings might include a discussion on feedback that you received in previous meetings and how it has (or hasn’t) been helpful. In addition, you could include in your meeting an overview and standpoint of your research project, the training courses that you are taking or have taken, and the local and international conferences that you have participated in (or plan to).

Ask your main supervisor for the things to include or remove from the agenda and allocate some time for spontaneous discussion. Keep in mind that, depending on your university, the minutes of your meeting might need to be signed and sent to the graduate student office.

Help your supervisors and mentors prepare

Once you have organised your agenda and prepared what you would like to present, send your supervisors and mentors the agenda, together with a written summary of the things you have achieved.

The summary could include a short description of your research project, a timetable of all ongoing activities, and other documents that help them gain an overview of your progress. Consider the information that your mentors and supervisors need to know so that are best able to help you. For example, you could describe the type of data you have collected or expect to collect (in case they are not familiar with it), and the analyses that you plan to perform.

Lastly, do not forget to keep a professional tone in all communications.

Your PhD thesis. All on one page.

Use our free PhD structure template to quickly visualise every element of your thesis. 

The final thing on your agenda

Finally, remember to put yourself on your agenda. It is your PhD. You are the one who will be immersed in the literature, designing studies, collecting and analysing data, drawing conclusions, and writing academic papers. The doctoral committee is there to help you, to turn your weaknesses into strengths, and to share with you the best of their knowledge.

Listen intently to everything that your mentors and supervisors tell you, and speak forcefully when you update them on your progress. Be aware that the questions they ask are there to guide you and improve your research. Similarly, everything you say not only updates the committee, it also lets them know about who you are and the type of researcher you are becoming.

Doctoral committee meetings should not add pressure to an already hectic PhD journey. Use these meetings wisely to move forward with your studies.

Dennis A. Rivera obtained a Master of Education at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and is now a doctoral student at UCLouvain. The focus of his research is on improving the pedagogical design of MOOC forums to promote task-oriented socio-cognitive interactions.

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Planning supervisory meetings

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One of the best ways to get the most from your supervisory meetings is to plan them. Creating an agenda ensures you cover all the important points and stay on topic. It also helps you to agree actions and monitor progress. Few supervisors will adopt this structured approach, so it is perfectly acceptable for you to suggest better ways of working.

This  meeting agenda template  from Thinkwell provides an excellent basis for planning supervisory sessions. It’s available as a Word document, so you can easily tweak it to suit your own needs.

How to use the template

1. what i’ve done since last meeting.

Make sure you have some progress to report! Especially if you agreed actions last time.

2. QUESTIONS, ISSUES

If something has been bothering you or if you don’t understand something, ask your supervisor as soon as possible. Ignoring a problem causes unnecessary stress and creates obstacles.

3. FEEDBACK

Discuss any feedback you’ve already received (e.g. by email), or ask your supervisor to discuss any submitted work.

4. WHAT I PLAN TO DO BEFORE NEXT MEETING

Agreeing objectives and introducing accountability boosts productivity and progress

5. THE NEXT THING

Breaking down your work into tiny manageable tasks makes it much easier. Agreeing the next task with your supervisor gives you a clear direction. It might be reading a particular journal article, writing 500 words on an experiment, or making contact with a colleague.

6. THE NEXT MEETING

Scheduling your next session creates momentum and avoids leaving long gaps between meetings.

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• CAREER COLUMN
• 10 December 2021

Managing up: how to communicate effectively with your PhD adviser

• Lluís Saló-Salgado 0 ,
• Angi Acocella 1 ,
• Ignacio Arzuaga García 2 ,
• Souha El Mousadik 3 &
• Augustine Zvinavashe 4

Lluís Saló-Salgado is a PhD candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. Twitter: @lluis_salo.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Angi Acocella is a PhD candidate in the Center for Transportation & Logistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. LinkedIn: @angi-acocella.

Ignacio Arzuaga García is a PhD student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. LinkedIn: @ignacioarzuaga.

Souha El Mousadik is a PhD student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.

Augustine Zvinavashe is a PhD candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.

When you start a PhD, you also begin a professional relationship with your PhD adviser. This is an exciting moment: interacting with someone for whom you might well have great respect and admiration, but who might also slightly intimidate you.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03703-z

This is an article from the Nature Careers Community, a place for Nature readers to share their professional experiences and advice. Guest posts are encouraged .

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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How to have Efficient Meetings with your Supervisor

Depending on the habits of your supervisors, he/she may be popping his/her head through your door every day for a quick chat, you may be meeting on a weekly basis, or only by appointment. Typically, you will have more meetings in the beginning, while your supervisor helps you with getting started, less meetings in the middle of your PhD trajectory when you are crunching numbers and doing experiments, and more meetings towards to end, to discuss your thesis chapters.

Even if your supervisors checks on you almost daily, you will need to have meetings at regular intervals to discuss in more depth about your research. If you want to get the most out of your meetings, a bit of preparation goes a long way.

Here are the different ways in which you can prepare yourself for  an efficient meeting  with your supervisor:

1. Send written material ahead of time

Give your supervisor at least one week of time to work through some documents prior to the meeting if you meet less frequently, or give him/her three days if you meet (almost) weekly. If you send material ahead of time, your supervisor will be able to read about your current progress, and will be able to point out what you are missing, and perhaps give you some feedback on your  writing .

Written material can be a great starting point for discussions, not just about the contents of your work, but also about where you could possibly present or publish your work.  The earlier you start writing , the earlier your supervisor will be able to help you find your writing voice, and will be able to comment in more detail on your thoughts.

2. Present your main insights with a short presentation

A presentation with five slides, mostly visual information, can be another excellent starting point for your meetings. Summarize the material of the written document that you sent, so that you can quickly remind your supervisor about what you are working on, and what you have discovered in the last weeks. Keep text on your slides to a minimum - you don't want to give a formal presentation to your supervisor, but projecting sketches, plots, and other visual information, or formulas, can be a good starting point for discussing your progress.

3. Develop a template for recording your meetings and expectation

At the beginning of your PhD trajectory, develop a template that you can use for your meetings. You can see an example of such a template in the figure below. Make sure you include a short agenda, list the references you want to discuss, leave space for taking notes of what you discussed during the meeting, and then agree on your actions for the next meeting.

4. Show options that you are thinking about

If you are stuck in your research, don't go to your supervisor hoping that he/she will hand you the solution on a golden platter . Since you are most into your research, you are expected to come up with solutions. When you are stuck, don't just accept the situation. Be creative, and think about possible solutions. Once you've outlined possible solutions, jot down a few ideas about the benefits and limitations of each of these solutions. With this material, discuss with your supervisor about the steps you should be taking next in your research. Don't take a passive attitude.

5. Briefly touch upon your planning

Discuss your planning during every meeting. Make sure you reserve at least 5 minutes of time during the meeting to discuss possible delays you have, and what your tools are to make sure you graduate on time. Discuss your short-term goals, your medium-term goals, and long-term goals. Your short-term goals can include the timing of the portion of research you currently are working on. Your medium-term goals can include a short discussion about which  conferences  you should attend, and where you should publish your research. Your long-term goals will be the discussion about your overall progress and if you are still set for graduating on time.

6. Come up with ideas and suggestions

Don't expect your supervisor to decide how you should carry out your research, which conferences you should attend, and where you should aim to publish your work. Come up with ideas and suggestions yourself. Show that you are growing into an independent researcher. Propose attending conferences, propose to submit your work to a certain journal, and, as discussed above, always have solutions in mind when you are faced with challenges in your research. Make sure you are in charge of your PhD progress.

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The Dos and Don’ts of PhD Supervision

• The Dos and Don’ts of…

Being a good supervisor is not easy, and tricky relationships between students and supervisors are all too common (you may have direct experience yourself). Understanding and mutually agreeing upon the role of the student and the supervisor is a crucial starting point. Establishing these expectations is an important early step and will make navigating the PhD easier for all concerned. With a shared idea of where you are both starting from, and where you want to get to, together you can chart the path forward. Hopefully these DOs and DON’Ts will help you get off on the right foot as a PhD supervisor.

• Managing your intellectual contribution

DO challenge their thinking…

A good PhD supervisor should question their student’s decision making – some part of your supervision meetings should be viva-like. Why are you doing this? How does this method answer this question? What do these data mean? Make sure your student understands what you’re doing and why – be explicit that you expect them to defend their interpretation of the literature / research plans NOT adhere to yours. It is important that they don’t feel that this is a test, with just one right answer.

When questioning your student, strike a balance between exploring alternatives, and making forward progress. Probing assumptions is important but don’t become a pedant; you need to recognise when is the time to question the fundamentals, and when is the time to move the debate on to the next decision.

DON’T make decisions for them…

Help students determine the next decision to be made (“ now that we have selected our measures we need to consider what analysis framework we will use ”) and also the parameters that constrain this decision… but remember that it is not your place to make the decisions for them. Flagging the consequences of the various choices is an excellent way to bring your experience to bear, without eclipsing the student. You may wish to highlight budget constraints, discuss the likely recruitment rate, or consider the consequences of a chosen data type in terms of analysis time and required skills. Help them see how each decision feeds back. Sue recently worked with a student to move from research question, to methods, to power calculation, to ideal sample size, and then – finding that the project budget was inadequate to support the sample target – back to RQ again. It’s tough for a student to have to re-visit earlier decisions but important to consider all the relevant factors before committing to data collection.

• Who’s in charge?

DO give them project management responsibility

Both Sue and Duncan run fortnightly lab group meetings with all their students and this is highly recommended as a way to check in and ensure no student gets left hanging. But don’t make the mistake of becoming your student’s project manager. Whether you prefer frequent informal check-ins or more formal supervisions that are spaced apart, your student should be in charge of monitoring actual progress against plans, and recording decisions. For formal meetings, they can provide an agenda, attachments and minutes, assigning action points to you and other supervisors, and chasing these if needed. They should monitor the budget, and develop excellent version control and data management skills.

This achieves a number of different goals simultaneously. First, it gives your student a chance to learn the generic project management skills which will be essential if they continue in an academic career, and useful if they leave academia too. Second, it helps to reinforce the sense that this is their project, since power and responsibility go hand in hand. Finally, it means that your role in the project is as an intellectual contributor, shaping and challenging the research, rather than wasting your skills and time on bureaucratic tasks.

DON’T make them a lackey to serve your professional goals

Graduate students are not cheap research assistants. They are highly talented early career researchers with independent funding (in the majority of cases) that has been awarded to them on merit. They have chosen to place their graduate research project in your lab. They are not there to conduct your research or write your papers. In any case, attempting this approach is self-defeating. Students soon realise that they are being taken advantage of, especially when they chat with friends in other labs. When students become unhappy and the trust in their supervisor breaks down, the whole process can become ineffective for everyone concerned. As the supervisor you are there to help and guide their project… not the other way around.

This can be really challenging when graduate projects are embedded within a larger funded project. How do you balance the commitment you’ve made to the funder alongside the need for students to have sufficient ownership? Firstly, think carefully about whether your project really lends itself to a graduate student. Highly specified and rigid projects need great research assistants rather than graduate students. Secondly, build in sufficient scope for individual projects and analyses, for example by collecting flexible data types (e.g. parent-child play samples) which invite novel analyses, and make sure that students are aware of any constraints before they start.

• What are they here to learn?

DO provide opportunities to learn skills which extend beyond the project goals

A successful graduate project is not just measured in terms of thesis or papers, but in the professional skills acquired and whether these help them launch a career in whichever direction they choose. This will mean allowing your students to learn skills necessary for their research, but also giving them broader opportunities: formal training courses, giving and hearing talks, visiting other labs or attending conferences. This is all to be encouraged, though be careful that it happens alongside research progress, rather than as a displacement activity. Towards the end of the PhD, as the student prepares to fly the nest, these activities can be an important way of building the connections that are necessary to be part of a scientific community and make the next step in their career.

DON’T expect them to achieve technical marvels without support

All too often supervisors see exciting new analyses in papers or in talks and want to bring those skills to their lab. But remember, if you cannot teach the students to do something, then who will? Duncan still tries to get his hands dirty with the code (and is humoured in this effort by his lab members), but often manages to underestimate how difficult some technical steps can be. Meanwhile, Sue is coming to terms with the fact that she will never fully understand R.

If you recommend new technical analyses, or development of innovative stimuli, then make sure you fully understand what you are asking of your student – allow sufficient time for this and provide appropriate support. When thinking of co-supervisors, don’t always go for the bigwig you are trying to cosy up to… often a more junior member of staff whose technical skills are up-to-date would be far more useful to your student. Also try and create a lab culture with good peer support. Just as ‘ it takes a village to raise a child’ , so “ it takes a lab to supervise a PhD student ”. Proper peer support mechanisms, shared problem solving and an open lab culture are important ingredients for giving students the proper support they need.

• Being reasonable

DO set clear expectations          

Step one of any PhD should be to create a project timeline. Sue normally recommends a detailed 6-month plan alongside a sketched 3-year plan, both of which should be updated about quarterly. For a study which is broken down into a series of short experiments, a different model might be better. Whatever planning system you adopt, you should work with your student to set realistic deadlines for specific tasks, assuming a full time 9-5 working day and no more, and adhere to these. Model best practice by providing timely feedback at an appropriate level of detail – remember, you can give too much as well as too little feedback.

Think carefully about what sort of outputs to ask for – make them reasonable and appropriate to the task. You might want propose a lengthy piece of writing in the first six months, to demonstrate that your student has grasped the literature and can pull it together coherently to make a case for their chosen research. But, depending on the project, it might also be a good idea to get them to contrast some differing theoretical models in a mini-presentation to your lab, create a table summarising key methodological details and findings from previous work, or publish a web page to prioritise community engagement with the project topic.

DON’T forget their mental health and work-life balance

PhD students might have recently moved from another country or city – they may be tackling cultural differences at work and socially. Simultaneous life changes often happen at the same time as a PhD – meeting a life partner, marriage, children. Your students might be living in rented and shared accommodation, with all the stresses that can bring.

Make sure your students go home at a reasonable hour. If you must work outside office hours be clear you don’t expect the same from them. Remind them to take a holiday – especially if they have had a period of working hard (e.g. meeting a deadline, collecting data at weekends). Ensure that information about the University support services are available prominently in the lab.

Remember to take into account their personal lives when you are discussing project progress. Being honest about your own personal situation (without over-sharing) creates an environment where it is OK to talk about stuff happening outside the office. Looking after your students’ mental health doesn’t mean being soft, or turning a blind eye to missed deadlines or poor quality work – it means being proactive and taking action when you can see things aren’t going well.

What about the research??

We are planning another blog in the future about MSc and undergrad supervision which might address some other questions more closely tied to the research itself – how to design an encapsulated, realistic but also worthwhile piece of research, and how to structure this over time. But the success (or otherwise) of a PhD hangs on a lot more than just having a great idea and delivering it on time. We hope this post will help readers to reflect on their personal management style and think about how that impacts their students.

So, be humble. Be supportive. Be a good supervisor.

Author:  Sue Fletcher-Watson

Related posts.

Checklist for first meetings between supervisor and doctoral student

A useful checklist of things that might be discussed during the first few meetings between supervisor and student

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first-meeting-checklist-supervisor-doctoral-student.pdf

Doctoral College [email protected]

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How to be a PhD supervisor

The relationship between phd students and their supervisors is often said to be the most intense in the academy, with huge implications for student success. yet most supervisors receive little if any training. here, six academics give their take on how to approach it .

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The anomaly of academics receiving years of training in research but none in teaching is often remarked upon. But, equally notoriously, what that research training amounts to very much depends on the individual supervisor. After all, academics are not trained in research supervision either, and both supervisors and supervisees have their own set of expectations, needs and aptitudes.

How much and what variety of direction is appropriate? And to what end? Is the PhD still best conceived exclusively as an apprenticeship for would-be academics, even though many doctoral graduates end up – willingly or otherwise – in other walks of life? Indeed, is it realistic to expect all PhD students to be proficient in independent research at the end of the process? And what to do with those who are not? Is it the supervisor’s task to make sure they drop out early? Must supervisors always be optimistic and encouraging, offering whatever level of micromanagement is necessary to get the student through?

Here, six academics give their own takes on where the lines should be drawn in the doctoral quicksand.

  ‘A PhD is about becoming an independent researcher’

If a final-year PhD researcher isn’t regularly telling me that I’m wrong, I worry; something has gone badly awry. They should argue that there’s no way my latest hare-brained experimental design could ever work, that my interpretation of the data can’t possibly be correct because it doesn’t take very basic physics into account, and that the paper published months ago by Professor W. Leader’s group at Prestige University described exactly the type of measurement I suggested in our most recent meeting. Why the heck wasn’t I aware of this? Don’t I read the literature? (They get extra credit for peppering their arguments with suitably chosen expletives.)

Demonstrating that level of project “ownership” is essential because otherwise I feel that I’ve failed in my supervision, not least because my university’s criteria for awarding a PhD – in line with those of every other university out there – stipulate that the candidate must have developed “the general ability to conceptualise, design and implement a project for the generation of new knowledge, applications or understanding at the forefront of the discipline, and to adjust the project design in the light of unforeseen problems”.

They must also demonstrate “a systematic acquisition and understanding of a substantial body of knowledge which is at the forefront of an academic discipline or area of professional practice”. I’ve never been able to square the rather perverse circle of requiring a student to be at the forefront of an academic discipline; someone whose doctoral work is, by definition, at the forefront of a discipline is most definitely not a student; they’re an expert defining the direction of their particular sub-field (or, as is more usual, their sub-sub-sub-sub-field). Still, it is clear that they should at least be in a position to swear with conviction at someone who is at the forefront of the discipline.

So I’m firmly of the opinion that we should ditch the term “PhD student” and instead use the rather more accurate “PhD researcher”. I am not alone in this. Jeff Ollerton, professor of biodiversity at the University of Northampton , has been making compelling arguments against the use of the term “PhD student” for quite some time. Retiring the “student” label would help drive a culture change that not only better recognised the core contributions made by PhD candidates to the research “ecosystem” (including those many first-authored papers submitted to the research excellence framework) but could also help improve their status in the eyes of that – hopefully dying – breed of PI who see early career researchers as the hired help, rather than the peers they should be. I was very fortunate to have a PhD supervisor with whom I genuinely collaborated; ideas were debated, discussed and dissected and I was never made to feel that I should “know my place”. I’ve since learned that this is not always the norm.  

Of course, not all PhD researchers are created equal; I am not so naive as to imagine that every doctoral candidate in every lab or library is capable of generating “a substantial body of knowledge at the forefront of an academic discipline”. But isn’t it then about time that we came clean about this? And wouldn’t phasing out the “PhD student” term help send a strong message to those who are considering taking on the formidable challenge of a doctoral programme?

A PhD is about becoming an independent researcher. The process is a universe away from the exam-and-coursework cycle that drives the vast majority of undergraduate degrees. There’s no curriculum and no textbook that map out a PhD from start to finish; no neatly annotated problems whose solutions are helpfully given in the back of the book. PhD researchers in effect write the textbook for the next generation of undergrads – what else do we mean when we say a doctoral thesis should be about expanding the body of knowledge in a particular field?    

In physics, we’ve become rather more open with PhD applicants in recent years about their chances of ultimately securing an academic position, should that be their goal. Let’s go one step further and be entirely upfront about the level of independence and self-direction involved in a PhD.

I’ve already followed Ollerton’s example and stopped referring to doctoral candidates as students. Why not join us? I suspect that your PhD researchers will appreciate the change.

Philip Moriarty is professor of physics at the University of Nottingham .

‘Being a decent supervisor means being a decent human being’

My PhD supervisor taught me a valuable lesson about good supervision: it involves far more than teaching a doctoral student how to be a good writer and researcher. It is about believing in students’ academic potential, fostering their confidence and supporting them on whichever of life’s pathways they choose to take.

From the outset of my own PhD, I got a strong sense from my supervisor that he had faith in my abilities as an academic – he wanted me to succeed, and he never stopped telling me that he believed I could succeed. He was therefore committed to helping me develop the skills I would need when it came to navigating the postdoctoral job search. He advised me to do some tutoring early on, so that I could learn more about the art of teaching. He alerted me to job opportunities and gave some invaluable advice about performing well at interviews. He encouraged me to spend a semester at an overseas institution, which proved particularly fruitful, allowing me to develop my confidence on both personal and academic levels. Lastly, he instilled in me a passion for networking and collaboration, both of which have proved invaluable throughout my academic career.

Over the past few years, as I have taken up the mantle of PhD supervision, the lessons I learned from my supervisor have stayed with me. As well as guiding my students’ research and writing, I always take time to share some of the transferable skills that I acquired. I encourage them to participate in projects that will build their self-confidence as academics and in the wider world. I nudge them to present regularly at key conferences and have invited some to collaborate in writing projects with me. I seek opportunities for them to network with other academics in their field, or apply for a tutoring job, or gain experience and confidence in talking about their research. Following the example of my own supervisor, I want my students to know that I will do my best to nurture their abilities and support their endeavours as much as I can.

Nevertheless, good supervision is not solely focused on students’ future job prospects. Being a decent supervisor means being a decent human being, and showing students your respect and support. I always recall that, just before I began my PhD, my supervisor offered to assist me with my doctoral funding application; he knew I needed the funding and he wanted me to succeed. Despite being already overstretched with other academic commitments, he took time to look through my application with me, using his own rich experience to highlight its weaknesses and strengths. And throughout my studies, he supported me quietly as I went through the personal traumas of a family bereavement and a relationship break-up.

This basic sense of kindness is wrought from an acknowledgement that our PhD students are human beings, just like us. They look to us as role models – both academic and otherwise – and it is our responsibility to show them that we are good academics and good people. Hopefully, they will carry on this tradition if, in later years, they become supervisors themselves.

Kindness is something I place at the forefront of the relationships I share with all my students, and, honestly, it’s not that hard. Words of encouragement during moments of self-doubt, a listening ear when life’s stresses get in the way, a shared coffee or lunch when money is tight – small gestures that, as I recall myself, can go a long way in making the PhD journey that little bit easier.

Caroline Blyth is a senior lecturer in theological and religious studies at the University of Auckland .

‘Providing structure is hugely beneficial to both the student and the supervisor’

Some of life’s most important roles come with no training – you have to learn everything on the job. Being a parent is one of those, and being a PhD supervisor is another. The similarity between these undertakings probably extends even further – to me, being a PhD supervisor means having the opportunity to nurture a young researcher, and to provide them with a strong and secure foundation on which they can establish a career.

This involves figuring out how best to support and encourage them, while also establishing strong expectations and boundaries. It means being present and available to provide input and feedback, while at the same time fostering confidence, independence and a sense of responsibility for their own future. It means being a role model, and inculcating skills and values (such as academic integrity) that will serve them throughout their career, whether that is in academia or beyond. It also means supporting them through the inevitable hard times, and revelling in their successes. In other words – it’s a pretty hefty responsibility, and often a difficult and stressful one.

I have a rather unconventional supervision history – my first faculty position did not permit PhD student supervision – so the bulk of my experience comes from more informal supervisory relationships with people from a variety of backgrounds, from recent bachelor’s graduates, to postdoctoral fellows, to more senior researchers. But these experiences, together with my memories of my time as a student and my growing experience as an undergraduate, MSc and PhD supervisor, have taught me some important lessons.

Among the most significant is the importance of structure: setting clear and explicit expectations, including deadlines and milestones (such as submission of papers for peer review), backed up by regular meetings with a specific agenda, action items and student follow-up. Providing such structure can be a lot of work, but it is hugely beneficial to both the student and the supervisor.

For students who are making the transition from the undergraduate or taught MSc setting, one of the most challenging features of the research PhD is often the lack of deadlines and the feeling of achievement that comes with meeting them, as well as the benchmarking that feedback on assignments or exams provides. Easing that transition allows the student to gain a sense of achievement and awareness of areas of growth and weakness, but it also alerts the supervisor to any signs of difficulties that might stand in the way of completion, such as mental health difficulties that may need support and a potential revision of the PhD plan and timeline. It can also provide a clear basis for communicating with a student that things are not progressing as they should, and that completion may not be a realistic goal at all.

All that said, I have to acknowledge that I often find it difficult to follow my own advice. Academic time goes by at warp speed, and sometimes attempts at structure just fall by the wayside. I also think that the onus for managing the relationship should not fall on the supervisor alone: students must also take responsibility for their own progression.

Figuring out these roles and responsibilities can be one of the most challenging aspects of being a PhD supervisor, and seeking out formal training in good management skills (now offered by many universities) can be immensely beneficial. But, ultimately, the nature of the PhD structure is necessarily dictated on a case-by-case basis by both the supervisor’s and the student’s personalities and working styles. For some students, a “micromanagement” style may prove necessary, while for others, a lighter touch will be more effective. I naturally shy away from the former and find it difficult to implement.

No doubt many academics – who, by definition, were proficient at working semi-independently during their own doctorates – feel the same. But if we have admitted a student to a doctoral programme, we have to accept that it is incumbent on us to give them the help they need to succeed.

Sometimes, of course, a gap will remain between expectations and student progress. In such cases, structures for performance tracking and feedback can help supervisors to determine whether or not the completion of the PhD is within reach. Given the recessive job climate in academia, stepping off the PhD track can often be a sensible option, and should be thought of as goal adjustment, not defeat.

Clare Kelly is Ussher assistant professor of functional neuroimaging at Trinity College Dublin and adjunct assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at New York University .

‘We can augment research skills with practical talents that build resilience and hone interpersonal intelligence’

PhD dropout numbers are approaching 50 per cent for many scientific disciplines in the US. That is because – speaking exclusively of scientific training – the truth is that not every doctoral student is cut out for independent research. In light of that, we should reconsider the true importance of possessing a doctorate.

After all, independent research is not the only walk of life in which the deep subject expertise and critical thinking skills acquired during doctoral study have enormous value. The years spent learning complex material, performing experiments and analysing data are immensely beneficial to anyone capable of doing these things. And sharing that information is necessary for the rest of society, too.

We need credentialed experts in every field, spread broadly, to enrich the lives of others who may not be so fortunate to have such opportunities. This is especially essential today, when misinformation is more believable than fact, and people confuse opinion with scholarship. Ideally, experts of every discipline should be embedded at all levels of the community, from teachers to church leaders, from small business owners to corporate leaders, to connect people to wisdom.

Perhaps the first step towards achieving this goal would be to remove the term “non-traditional career” from the academic advising vocabulary – even while keeping it very much inclusive of the production of PIs. We are living in a time of immense innovation, so fresh thoughts about employment trajectories should be equally novel. A student who ends up working outside academia should not be regarded by their supervisor as a failed self-cloning experiment. A PhD teaches students how to think, but we can broaden the scope of our mentoring to augment research skills with practical talents that build resilience and hone the interpersonal intelligence that is valuable in a wide range of careers.

In many US universities, students intent on entering the research phase of their doctorates have first to pass a two-day written and a one-day oral candidacy exam, so we already have sufficient preliminary evidence of their subject content mastery. When their suitability to be an independent researcher is in doubt, I try to direct my own students into jobs that may better suit their skills within academia. One example is student instruction; I offer teaching opportunities in my undergraduate courses in the form of 1–2 credit hours of independent study. This allows the doctoral students to prepare a topic, present it and create test questions, as well as to host and moderate the associated discussions on the electronic learning platform. The postgraduates are often surprised at how difficult and time-consuming this is.

For instance, pharmacology or biochemistry students with talents that may be more suited to the biomedical industry could be partnered with industry experts in their field who offer internships beyond the bench, to see how they fit in a non-academic environment. Many academic scientists have their own ties to industry, so it is not too much of a stretch to imagine that this could be arranged for the few students a year – perhaps as early as the second year of graduate school, before the research phase begins.

Some will say that PIs are not in a good position to prepare people for careers with which they themselves have no personal familiarity. But we were trained to develop young scientists and to get them to their destination. Whether that destination mirrors our own should be irrelevant.

Jennifer Schnellmann is associate professor of pharmacology at the  University of Arizona .

‘Students need to bring their interests into conversation with the discipline as a whole’

I’ve always conceived higher education to be a process of negotiation between the consumption and the production of knowledge. Students who are capable consumers of knowledge – usually those who do well in examinations – do not necessarily become equally capable producers of knowledge: that is, researchers. The reverse is also true.

Production of knowledge should start early, ideally in the form of undergraduate research papers. But, of course, it comes much more strongly into focus during the doctorate. There are debates about whether the dissertation is the last work of the research trainee or the first utterance of the professional. Perhaps it is a bit of both, but the proportions typically vary according to whether the student is working in the humanities or the natural sciences.

Research in the humanities is, for the most part, done by individuals, while scientific research is more of a group activity, led by a principal investigator. What this means is that anyone who has completed a doctorate in the humanities – my field – is, by definition, capable of independent research – unless the degree has been obtained by unfair means! Advisers share their expertise in the larger subfield, but the dissertation project itself is very much the student’s own.

I’ve known advisers who recommend that their students do not publish before completing their degree; and I’ve known advisers who encourage students to publish, present and network as much as possible even before the dissertation is completed. The conflict is between an approach that sees a doctorate as a complete, disinterested immersion in scholarship versus one that conceives it as professionalisation – which includes socialisation into the institutional lives of a given discipline, as well as more material functions such as seeking jobs, grants and fellowships. Scholarship and professionalisation are related and mutually reinforcing, of course, yet they are not the same and some people are better at one than the other.

My recommendation to my advisees is that they pursue a middle course. The origin of their scholarship, I tell them, should be something that sparks their passion, but once the fire is started, they need to bring their interests into conversation with the discipline as a whole. So, yes, they should use publication to enter into the conversation, but they should guard against letting professionalisation take over the independence and integrity of their intellectual lives. Dissertations should not be shaped in response to the jobs market. But once they have their scholarly trajectory in place, they should identify how it addresses needs and gaps in the discipline as practised today.

One of the big debates in my field, literary studies, is the book versus dissertation question. Should a doctoral student concentrate on fulfilling the traditional expectations of the very small group of people who will ever pay their dissertation any attention, adorning it with copious footnotes and a lengthy literature review that even the examiners won’t read? Or should they write with the wider book audience in mind right from the beginning?

My personal recommendation is to try to write the book. “Try” is the operative word: it is not easy to write something that coheres and reads like a book, especially for the first-time writer, yet aiming to do so will still lead to a radically more readable style. And this is important in the humanities, where the product and the process are not easily separable. It is probably OK for an article describing a new drug to be written in a dull or inaccessible style. But in literature, scholarship must also bring pleasure, even to academic readers.

In any case, students will be revising their dissertations for publication soon enough. Why waste huge chunks of time during their postdoctoral fellowship or first tenure-track job doing so? Much better to cut out the flab from the very outset.

Saikat Majumdar is professor of English and creative writing at  Ashoka University . He is the author, most recently, of  College: Pathways of Possibility  (Bloomsbury India, 2018).

‘The paltry credit offered in the US system disincentivises true mentorship’

Over the past half-decade I have directed well over a dozen graduate projects, and I believe more than ever that the effectiveness of the process should be replicated across the curriculum.

Working one-to-one with a senior scholar expert in the field is a unique boon for student persistence and engagement. To the extent that a thesis, dissertation or other extended research project effectively reduces the corporate scale and increasingly impersonal feel of higher education, it is a process worth celebrating. Because it is also labour-intensive, time-inefficient and messy, it offers an antidote to the brand of assembly-line education preferred by degree mills.

The thesis and dissertation serve as invaluable reminders that student engagement in the 21st century, regardless of level, has everything to do with helping scholars find authorship and agency. When students propose their topic, research it and ultimately defend it, they are more likely to experience the kind of ownership that produces the best, most accountable scholarship. Even removed from faculty guidance, extended independent research projects are valuable for the self-directed, iterative learning processes they cultivate.

However, the idea that a doctoral or master’s candidate could derive significant value from the dissertation or thesis even without faculty supervision raises the question of how meaningful, in practice, the role of director is. For example, graduate students often enrol in thesis or dissertation hours equivalent to a full-credit course, then re-enrol in those hours to work on their credit-bearing project for a second semester. However, if contact hours with supervising faculty members are minimal, as they often are, can we consider those credit hours well earned? The integrity of the thesis and dissertation process depends in large part on the activeness and availability of the director; if that director only meets in-person with their advisee once or twice a semester and again at the defence, have they not become mostly ceremonial figures, there to cement the illusion of academic legitimacy?

It isn’t that thesis advisers and dissertation directors are lazy, but that the paltry credit offered for their labours in the US system disincentivises true mentorship. While a graduate student may earn the equivalent of two full classes’ worth of credit for two semesters of thesis or dissertation work, the faculty member who signs on as director does well to earn a quarter of the credits they would otherwise earn teaching in the classroom.

Provosts may argue that because the thesis and the dissertation qualify as independent research, any credits awarded supervising faculty should reflect that supporting (read: secondary) role. Such logic works in cases where the graduate student is self-motivated and intellectually prepared, but it fails spectacularly in instances where the degree candidate needs significant retraining or academic acculturation.

The thesis or dissertation process works best with fully engaged supervisory faculty properly credited for their work. It is vital that director and degree candidate be realistic about what may be achieved in a given period of time. In my view, both grad students and their supervising faculty members are better served by shorter theses and dissertations, where greater focus and depth make for a truer simulacrum of life. PhD candidates will need to add chapters at a later date to merit publication by a scholarly or university press in any event, and the intervening years between the completion of the thesis or dissertation and its ultimate book publication serve to age the scholar and their scholarship. With candidates for advanced degrees getting younger, the postdoctoral years become more conducive to the maturative process that ripens the writer and refines the research.

For my money, the thesis or dissertation is best regarded not merely as pre-professorial training but as the beginning of collaborative intellectual enquiry designed to last a lifetime.

Zachary Michael Jack is associate professor of English at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois.

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Getting the most out of thesis supervision meetings

Chances are that postgraduate students meet their thesis supervisor/s only every few weeks, and for a limited amount of time. Therefore, it is extremely important to take full advantage of supervision meetings. The following tips help bachelor’s, master’s and PhD students to make the most of thesis supervision meetings.

What can you expect from a thesis supervisor?

Taking charge of thesis supervision meetings, pre-meeting progress updates before thesis supervision meetings, agendas and note-taking strategies during thesis supervision meetings, post-meeting action points after thesis supervision meetings.

Before diving into what you can do to get the most out of thesis supervision meetings, it is important to be clear on the roles during a thesis process:

A thesis supervisor supports and guides you through writing your thesis. However, ultimately you are responsible for your work.

What this role division means in practice is that students cannot expect their thesis supervisor/s to tell them exactly what to do. And the thesis supervisor/s will not simply provide students with solutions to their challenges on a silver platter.

That said, a supervisor’s role is crucial. He or she will guide you in your writing, point out weaknesses in your argument and approach, and make suggestions for improvement. Furthermore, you can benefit from their experiences and scientific knowledge.

Considering that students are ultimately responsible for their thesis, they do benefit from taking charge of supervision meetings.

First and foremost, it means that students should be proactive. They should stay on top of time planning. They should keep track of a regular supervision schedule. And they should let the supervisor/s know what they need in terms of support and advice.

Pre-meeting updates, a meeting agenda and strategy for note-taking, as well as post-meeting action points, help students to get the most out of thesis supervision meetings.

Each of these points will be explained in more detail below. Combined, they offer concrete and repeatable structure to prepare, take part in, and summarise thesis supervision meetings.

It is never too late to change your approach to thesis supervision meetings. Just introduce the new structure to your supervisor/s and explain how it helps you to keep track of your progress. Most supervisors appreciate it when students take responsibility for their learning.

Pre-meeting updates are a summary of the progress you made since your last meeting.

Both master’s and PhD thesis supervisors tend to supervise many students at the same time. They might lose track of the progress of individual students. Progress updates before a meeting help to bring everyone up to date.

Sending around progress updates before the meeting also saves a lot of time: during the meeting, you can dive much more quickly into the discussion of your challenges and how to move forward.

In the pre-meeting updates, it is also advisable to already share your main questions and struggles in advance. Be very clear in stating what you need from your supervisor/s. It helps them to prepare.

And of course, if you have written text for review, make sure to give your supervisor/s enough time to review it. Supervisors have busy agendas. So don’t hand in the written text an hour or a day before the meeting.

• Send around a progress update before the meeting.
• Specify the questions and challenges you would like to discuss.
• If applicable, share written text well in advance.

During a thesis supervision meeting, be prepared. Have an agenda ready, and share it with your supervisor/s at the beginning of the meeting.

The agenda should reflect the key points that you would like to discuss during the meeting.

In addition to the agenda, explain what your key objectives are for the meeting. Then, ask if your supervisor/s would like to add points to the agenda. Edit the agenda on the spot so that all points and objectives are reflected.

A good agenda helps to structure the discussion and it ensures that all relevant points will be addressed.

Furthermore, have a good note-taking strategy in place. Even if you understand everything that is said during a supervision meeting, it can be tough to remember it all.

Either take your time to take proper notes by hand or ask all parties present whether it is okay to record the meeting. You will thank yourself later.

• Come prepared, with an agenda and meeting objectives.
• Make space for unplanned discussions and feedback in the agenda.
• Take detailed notes or ask to record the meeting.

Phew! The meeting is over. What’s next?

Take a day or two to reflect on the meeting. Sit down, have a look at your notes, and then develop action points that came out of the discussion.

Action points can be agreements made with the supervisor/s on content, research methods, writing style, you name it. Compile a short but concrete list of the steps you will take to progress with your thesis. Where applicable, also include specific deadlines and notes on time-planning.

Then, send the post-meeting action points to your supervisor/s.

Why? Because there is a chance that you misunderstood each other. Asking your supervisors for brief feedback on your action points provides an extra layer of security. It shows whether you are on the same page and whether you are moving in the right direction.

Furthermore, it is always good to have your agreements in writing. It can help, for instance, if you run into trouble because you have to deal with conflicting feedback from different supervisors .

Lastly, already start to prepare for the next meeting. If you haven’t done it yet, send a calendar invite to your supervisor/s, so that everyone can block the time of your upcoming thesis supervision meeting in their agenda.

• Develop concrete action points after the meeting, and share them with your supervisor/s.
• Reiterate agreements on deadlines and time-planning.
• Send out calendar invites for the next meeting.

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• Free planners and guides

PhD Toolkit

Free templates and planners available for you to download.

The book Planning Your PhD describes a number of planners and forms you can use to help plan your PhD. You can download these planners and forms below.

• Show Planners

Thesis Planner - Moveable tasks

This planner allows you to work out the timeline for the major tasks of your PhD. ..

Thesis Planner - No tasks

This planner allows you to work out the timeline for the major tasks of your PhD ..

Six Month Planner - Moveable tasks

The Six Month Planner lets you map out your tasks for the next six months ..

Six Month Planner - No tasks

This blank planner shows you the next six months which you can fill in ..

Completion Planner - Moveable tasks

This Completion Planner allows you to work out the timeline for the major tasks of the final year..

Completion Planner - No tasks

This blank Completion Planner shows you the final twelve months of your PhD ..

This Six Months

This form helps you identify your targets for the next six months ..

Use this form to map out your tasks for the coming week ..

To Day List

Use this form to plan out your day and identify when the important jobs are going to get done ..

The Next Thing

To help you get clear about your very next task ..

Writing Audit

Use the Writing Audit to work out how much writing you have done and update it as you add new wor..

Meeting Agenda

A template agenda for meetings with your supervisor ..

Meeting Notes

A template for noting down the outcomes of your meetings with your supervisor ..

PhD Toolkit - All forms

Download all PhD Toolkit forms in a zip ..

PhD Toolkit - All planners

Download all PhD Toolkit planners in a zip ..