SCS Doctoral Advising Resources

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On this page, we provide a variety of resources for doctoral advisees and advisors.

We include guidelines and content specific to SCS and to CMU, as well as external resources and examples.

Question/Concern

For Advisee

For Adviser

What should I do if the adviser-advisee relationship isn't good/isn't working well?

Examples:

“There’s a better research match elsewhere.”

“I need some changes for us to continue working together, with external accountability.”

“I need to leave.”

The initial adviser/advisee match should be made carefully, and if there are difficulties, one should first try to make whatever changes are necessary rather than switching. One should only change advisers if really necessary, since this will almost always delay your Ph.D. completion.

A cordial but frank discussion should take place, possibly with the assistance of the Ph.D. program head, to attempt to resolve whatever difficulties are occurring.

In order to actually change advisers, see next item.

Complicated questions like this are why we have Ph.D. student reviews at the end of each semester. If the adviser is not able to resolve any relationship issues themselves, the other program faculty should help try to find a solution. In more time-critical situations, the Ph.D. program head should help the adviser work on this, possibly with the help of other program faculty.

What is the process for changing advisers?

Talk with your Ph.D. program head about needing to change advisers. Once the program head agrees it is warranted, find a faculty member willing to be your new adviser. If you don’t already know who else in your department might be doing appropriate work, the program head should help you determine that. Meet with potential new advisers and get a commitment to advise you going forward. Once that’s agreed, tell the program head, and then tell your current adviser, and arrange as smooth a transition of your current work as possible.If the program head agrees that an adviser switch is warranted, the old adviser should be gracious about letting the student leave, and work with the student and new adviser to transition any in-progress work.

The potential new adviser(s) should work with the program head, in addition to evaluating the student’s fit into their current research plans. This is a program-wide optimization problem.

Making sure all current students have the best possible adviser match is one of the responsibilities of the head and all the faculty in a Ph.D. program.

How much leeway does the department have for slower deadlines due to an adviser shift?

How do bumps in the road affect my funding?

Complicated questions like this are why we have Ph.D. student reviews at the end of each semester. The other program faculty should weigh in on how much leeway is normal, but adviser shifts should certainly be considered in the evaluation of “satisfactory progress.” Students who are making satisfactory progress should not typically have to worry about funding questions.

What is the process for finding/adding/removing co-advisers?

Finding/Adding: Co-advising should arise from intellectual sources. The student’s research naturally fits into or in between both co-advisers’ research areas. Upon mutual agreement among all, the co-advisers should inform the program head and program coordinator.

Removing: If the student and/or one adviser feel that the co-advising relationship is no longer appropriate, they should discuss that with the other adviser. Once the student and remaining adviser determine that they will proceed without the other co-adviser, the remaining adviser should inform the program head and program coordinator.

See the student side text.

In the case of removing a co-adviser, the remaining adviser should be gracious toward the other adviser. The former co-adviser should be gracious toward the student and the remaining adviser.

What happens if my adviser doesn't have sufficient funding for an advisee?

For new Ph.D. students:
If a specific faculty member does not have sufficient funding to take on a new advisee, make sure to have a discussion with them to learn what options are available. You may need to explore other potential advisers who currently have funding.

For current Ph.D. students: Students who are making satisfactory progress should not typically have to worry about funding questions. The department should work with your adviser and other faculty to arrange for you to finish, funded.

Faculty typically must have some clear path to funding to be matched to a Ph.D. student in the first place. If funding plans go awry, the adviser needs to work with the department head (and possibly also the business manager and program head) to determine what set of funds will see the student through to a timely completion of their Ph.D.

What happens if a graceful exit from the Ph.D. program is warranted?

Not everyone who starts a Ph.D. finishes. Each department has a master's degree that can be awarded to a Ph.D. student who has achieved some minimum set of requirements, but will be leaving without finishing the Ph.D.

Question/Concern

For Advisee

For Adviser

What are reasonable expectations for me as an advisee and for my adviser?

The Values document provides perspective on responsibilities of students and advisers. Generally speaking, students and advisers share responsibility for mutual communication, enabling learning objectives and progress toward the student’s degree (although students are not responsible for funding).

Additional frameworks for expectations can be found below, but useful areas for understanding expectations include your adviser’s general timelines and constraints for publishing, any additional goals for student output over their time as a student, lab responsibilities, leave policies, and methods for checking in on progress.

How should I provide and request feedback?

Over the course of your Ph.D., one of your goals is learning project management, communication and professional skills.

Being proactive about getting both positive and negative feedback will help both you and your adviser address problems before they grow or recognize progress, and can help you both assess aspects of your nonresearch professional development that may not come up in weekly discussions of research.

Some tools for this are setting recurring times to discuss things like goal-setting, progress toward degree, areas for improvement in communications, and additional professional concerns students may have.

The departmental Ph.D. evaluation meetings are meant to encourage this process. As these meetings are an extension of your relationship with your adviser, we encourage meeting to discuss semesterly progress before this meeting to get higher resolution feedback from your adviser.

In addition to working with your adviser, there are other resources in SCS that you can use to get additional feedback. For example, Jill Lehman serves as SCS Research Consultant, a resource available to all graduate students in SCS and meant to complement what advisers already provide. If you need additional help with research writing, presentation or other research skills, contact Jill. Jill can serve as an additional sounding board for graduate student paper drafts, talks or early research ideas. She can support you with presentation skills, challenges in research writing, the design of human subject studies, the development of annotation guidelines or the design of human-computer interactions.

Create policies for quality standards or amount of time required to review work such as conference papers, workshop papers and fellowship applications in advance.

This is so advisers can set aside the time required, as well as having a clear definition to rely on when a paper needs more work before being submitted externally.

Negative feedback is a part of any management position, and the more you can share your expectations with students in advance, the less contentious and the more useful this will be.

Creating lab resources such as a wiki or Google doc of expectations can help other lab members add best-practices or resources for lab members. Similarly, it is useful to create mechanisms where lab members can provide feedback to each other and support each other.

The contents of semi-annual review feedback should not be a surprise to students, particularly when it is negative. Issues leading to an "n-1" or nonsatisfactory progress letter should involve discussion of how to repair these issues, and should not be unexpected to students.

What can I do if my adviser doesn't want me to propose/defend/graduate but I want to?

Your adviser(s) have a responsibility to not let you propose or defend if they believe that you would not pass. So you should first discuss with your adviser(s) what they think remains to be done to pass the proposal/defense.

If the two of you are at an impasse, you can talk with your other committee members and see whether they seem to agree with your adviser or you.

As the adviser, you have a responsibility to not let the student propose or defend if you believe that they would not pass.

If after explaining to the student what you think remains to be done in order to be able to pass the proposal/defense, the student still insists they are ready, you can talk with the other committee members and/or other colleagues familiar with the student's work. See whether they agree with you or the student and listen to their reasons. The committee members or colleagues may be willing to help discuss their perspectives with the student, if helpful.

Make sure to communicate with your Ph.D. students about the typical length of a Ph.D. in your group or department, and reasons why some students may take more or less time to graduate.

Ultimately, decisions about a Ph.D. student's readiness to propose, defend or graduate should be made based on the student's work and what is best for the student. These factors should be prioritized over others, such as convenience for the adviser. If you feel that a student is trying to propose/defend "too early," make sure you clearly communicate your reasons. Consider discussing these reasons in relation to both academic standards and career considerations for the student.

Question/Concern

For Advisee

For Adviser

Advising meetings and lab meetings

Advising meetings: In general, students should expect to have dedicated advising meetings with their advisers at least once every other week. Advisers vary substantially in how these meetings are scheduled, how long they are and how frequent they are. Many have recurring meetings scheduled throughout the semester. Others schedule meetings on demand. Some prefer frequent short meetings and others longer working sessions. These are good questions to ask a potential adviser during the matching process to ensure your adviser's style will be a good match to your expectations.

Lab meetings: Research groups vary widely with respect to the number, length or even the existence of group meetings. 

Lab deadlines

Expectations around lead time for drafts of papers or other research artifacts can be communicated with Ph.D. students through mentoring compacts or lab handbooks. For example, “I (the adviser) expect an outline in our lab format a month before the deadline” or “I (the adviser) expect a draft for review a week ahead of time.”

Specific examples of lab policies can be found in the resources linked below, under "Tools to Support Adviser–Advisee Communication and Expectation Setting."

Expected time off for Ph.D. students

Taking breaks from work is an essential part of being a well-rounded person. We believe that occasional breaks (by all) are essential to successful and creative research.

Students should take a minimum of four weeks of vacation per year. More vacation is also acceptable in many research groups, with some accommodating as much as 6-8 weeks per year. The timing of vacations should be determined through conversations between advisers, advisees and research collaborators ahead of time to facilitate project planning.

Question/Concern

For Advisee

For Adviser

Conference attendance funding and qualification specifications

Example: “I will send an author to accepted conference papers, not workshops.”

Make yourself aware of your adviser’s conference attendance and funding policies. It’s a good idea to check in before you submit a paper if you are expecting to attend as a presenting author.

You should be proactive about finding additional sources of funding and support for conferences. These include:

Discuss travel with your adviser and also see CMU’s travel policy for students and policies for expensing your trip. You may need to book travel through your adviser’s administrative assistant if the university requires that they use CTP/Concur to obtain the best rates. Ask your department about their receipt and reimbursement policies, so you can be sure about what will be reimbursed and how to document your expenses (e.g., itemized receipts for food showing all items ordered).

Policy should be applied equitably to all students at a given levels. For example, all Ph.D. students can have one policy, or possibly differentiated by stage (e.g., thesis mode) and another for master's students. Policies should be in writing for reference.

The department or adviser policy should describe what you will cover, (e.g., conference registration, flights, housing, food, etc.) and what the requirements are for each. For example, will you handle food as a per diem or require receipts? Will you cover costs differently for presenting and nonpresenting authors? Also be clear on how you can accommodate students with additional needs or preferences, such as requiring accessible lodging, or how to coordinate with students who would like to book alternate travel or lodging and pay the difference with the standard fare. 

CMU policy provides overarching rules.

Decisions should be timely, (i.e., in time for students to get early pricing on admission and find inexpensive places to stay).

At minimum, we recommend helping Ph.D. students attend one conference per year.

Authorship distribution

Know your lab’s authorship guidelines.

Request early discussion of authorship (e.g., whether you are first author or not).

Record what you do on a paper, including “invisible work” like project management.

Don’t publish things with people’s names on them if they haven’t had a chance to review, and provide that chance where people contributed to the work.

You should have clear and consistent authorship guidelines for your lab. These policies should be applied equitably to all students.

As a starting place, faculty and students should look to the authorship requirements of different publication venues (e.g., https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/information-for-authors) for guidance. Here are some additional examples of authorship policies and approaches from other areas:

You should educate your students on the meaning of author order and its impact on their research careers. 

It is particularly important to discuss authorship EARLY in the authorship process to minimize misaligned expectations. Authorship can then be revisited as needed throughout the lifespan of a project. If some work will not be counted toward authorship, ensure that students who do it are made aware of this as soon as possible, and that they receive other benefits from participation in the research (e.g., educational or monetary compensation).

Study funding

Your adviser should be funding expenses related to your core research. However, they are not obligated to fund side projects or other opportunities. Be prepared to be flexible.

There are ways to get help without money. Ask your advisers about whether there are undergraduate or master’s students seeking experience or taking independent study research credits who might like to work on your project. Consider working with summer research students if your department has such programs. See if you can find another faculty member with students who might be interested in collaborating.

You can also apply for your own research funding through fellowship programs. SCS maintains an up-to-date database of Ph.D. fellowship opportunities. For example, here are some fellowships that usually accept annual applications or nominations: 

  • National Science foundation (NSF)
  • Hertz Foundation
  • Apple
  • Microsoft
  • Google

You can also contact Nancy Pollard in SCS to ask about available fellowships and resources to prepare applications.

Let your students know what your funding can cover and how flexible you can be with the scope of the research to fund their proposed projects. Don’t ask your students to pay for study expenses out of their own pockets. Consider all options that could help fund your student’s research, including collaborations across departments.

Many challenges in doctoral advising relationships stem from misaligned expectations between advisers and advisees. Below are a set of tools that doctoral advisers can use to externalize important information that may otherwise go unwritten or unspoken. These resources aim to help improve transparency with Ph.D. advisees and reduce misunderstandings or miscommunications.

Each of these resources are meant to provide faculty with potential starting points for materials specific to their labs. With a wide range of existing resources available, there is no need for each faculty member to start from scratch.

The worksheets linked below are templates that faculty members can fill out, or adjust as needed. We also provide examples of mentoring compacts and faculty-authored guides for Ph.D. students working with them. You should feel free to borrow from any of these resources, with attribution.

Excellence in Doctoral Advising Worksheets (customizable templates):


Examples of mentoring compacts between advisers and advisees:


Examples of faculty-authored guides for Ph.D. students working with them:


Question/Concern

Answer

Intellectual property: royalties, spinoffs, equitable sharing

The Carnegie Mellon policy on intellectual Property (IP) may be found at this page.

In general, the financial benefits of IP should be shared equitably among faculty, staff and students. However, equitable sharing is complicated and nuanced, and individuals are encouraged to consult with the CMU Center for Technology Transfer and Enterprise Creation (CTTEC).

For students who are employed by CMU or elsewhere:

Students should know that it is the responsibility of students who are also employees of other outside entities to resolve any conflicts between CMU and provisions of agreements with their employers prior to beginning any undertaking at the university that will involve the development of intellectual property.

If a student is also a part-time university employee, the student is considered staff with regard to intellectual property developed as a result of the student’s employment, and as a student with regard to other intellectual property.

Generally, for IP created solely by students (as students), the student is not required to pay the university (but the university does have a license to the IP).

Different provisions apply when there is internal or external sponsorship.

Work done by individuals as consultants to outside firms is presumed not to involve unreimbursed substantial use of university facilities, and the rights to intellectual property created under consulting agreements are retained by the outside firms or the individual as specified by the terms of the consulting agreement.

This is NOT a full explanation of the relevant terms.

It’s important to consult with an expert (e.g., in CTTEC), as the provisions may be complicated.

Your department, the associate dean for research/strategic initiatives or associate dean for doctoral programs can also help.

 

Student consulting, spinoffs and conflicts of interest

Refer to the Carnegie Mellon Conflict of Interest/Commitment Policy. (This policy is about conflict between personal interests and the university.)

“All university members should make the fulfillment of their responsibilities to the university the focal point of their professional activities. University members should only become involved in extramural professional activities insofar as they advance the mission or prestige of the university and the activities do not interfere with their responsibilities to the university. However, this policy is not intended to unduly restrict involvement in outside activities.”

“Graduate students are generally discouraged from consulting, especially as this distracts from their educational goals. In particular, there is great potential for conflict of interest when graduate students consult for spinoff companies; in this case, prior approval of the department head must be obtained.”

“Faculty members must exercise prudence in directing students toward activities from which the faculty member might financially benefit. The potential conflict is obvious, and faculty are encouraged to consult their dean, department head or colleagues for an independent evaluation of the activities' educational merits.”

Personal leave for financial, academic or personal (health, mental health or parental/family) reasons

Examples:

What is the procedure and impact on my status/funding in the program if I need to take a leave? 

What are the requirements for each?

What are the issues with returning to full-time research?

The CMU policy on Student Leaves may be found at this page, and the CMU policy on Student Parental Accommodations may be found on the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs website.

Generally, students who wish to take a formal Leave of Absence should first contact their adviser to discuss plans while on leave and conditions for a smooth return after the leave.

Students must also complete the leave of absence form available at The Hub website and obtain signatures from their home department and dean. (There are additional rules for Ph.D. students in ABD status.) Your department or the associate dean for doctoral programs can also help.

Gestational parents are eligible to receive stipend funding for up to six (6) weeks during either a Short-Term Accommodation for Gestational Parents or during a Formal Leave of Absence. Continued academic stipend funding may be extended by two (2) weeks, for a total of eight (8) weeks, if an absence longer than six weeks is medically necessary.

Non-gestational parents are are eligible to continue to receive stipend funding for up to four (4) weeks during a Short-Term Parental Accommodation. 

Additional CMU resources for students

CMU has a wide variety of resources for students. In addition to talking with your adviser and department — as appropriate and comfortable — you may want to explore the following options.

How can I report sexual harassment?

All faculty and staff (except CAPS) are mandatory reporters, so report to any trusted faculty or staff member.

See information on Title IX reporting.

What can I do if I see one of my student peers or a faculty colleague’s advisee having an abusive/toxic adviser-advisee relationship?

Report the issue to your Ph.D. coordinator and/or program head or ombudsperson, if your program has one.