Jacob:
When I was about supervise my first Ph.D. student I went through the same
anxiety that you are experiencing, but could not find any "cookbook" type
reference that would help me, and would apply to all situations. After 20+
completed Ph.Ds, and five current students under my supervision, I will
describe the process that I have been using and we have adopted in our
department for all Ph.D. supervisors.
You will notice that
a) we do not pre-define the student's research area, but give them
latitude to do it while guiding them
through their thought process,
b) we put very high emphasis on our PhDs, probably with a higher
degree of rigor than many other
programs,
c) we are in the college of engineering and the culture and
requirements are different from business
schools,
d) we offer only MS and PhD degrees (no undergraduate) in our
department, and see our Ph.Ds as the
emerging leaders for managing technology in an increasingly
technology-driven world, thus treat them
accordingly.
Our model worked for me very well over the years, and it has been successful
for all of our faculty who adopted it for the last 15-16 years; but I can not
say that it is universally adoptable.
Here is the process:
1. Interview each Ph.D. applicant for an hour before the
accept/reject decision (For international applicants,
modify this step by making the accept/reject decision based on
submitted documents, and schedule the
interview after their arrival)
2. In the interview, concentrate on
a) the student's career goals and objectives,
b) research interests,
c) what thoughts he/she has given to the approach to address
his/her research interests; what
methods he/she might be considering to use; how the
research questions are likely to be
formulated, etc.
The goal at this stage is to determine both the level of maturity and
intellectual preparation of the student to
conduct Ph.D. research, and to identify the best match for his Ph.D.
supervisor.
3. Tell the student to start developing and refining research ideas
in several independent studies with the
department faculty, while taking courses in the program.
4. Once the research topic, scope and boundaries are defined, send
the student to discuss the topic, in
detail, with faculty members who might have the best match with
that research. Identify the Ph.D>
supervisor accordingly.
5. If I agree to be the student's supervisor, I set the guidelines at
the beginning:
a) I am committing 500-1,000 hours of my time to him/her, and
I expect several times of that effort
from him/her over the next few years
b) The student will develop creative ideas and work on
addressing them, but he/she will follow my instructions to
the letter in doing so.
c) I will be available to discuss problems and challenges on
a 24/7 basis. The student can call me at
the office, home or my cell phone if a crisis pops up.
6. I set up regular meetings with the student, starting with a
one-hour long meeting every two weeks, then
gradually increasing it to a two-hour meeting every weeks. I
discuss the research progress in detail, see
what the student has done, test the model, change the direction
as needed, focus on the parts that need
to be studied further, etc.
7. Because I always have multiple Ph.D. students at various stages of
their work, I also bring them together
once every three months in a day-long meeting. The students bring
a written description of where they are
in their research, and make a half-hour PowerPoint presentation on
their work. As a group, they challenge
the presenter, make constructive comments, offer help as needed,
share literature with each other, and
do an earlier evaluation of the draft papers that may be in
preparation for submission to refereed
conferences and journals. The students who have taken their
comprehensive exams, or presented their
research proposals, or defended their dissertations, discuss their
experiences with the rest of the team.
8. When the students complete their research proposals (typically a
100-page document) for presentation,
dissertations (typically a 300-page document) for defense, or
papers for conferences or journals, I first
send them to my editorial assistant to do the editorial checks,
then usually have three cycles for going
over the document and modifying it, as needed, before it is
submitted to the committee members for
their comments prior to the formal meeting with them, or to a
journal for the refereeing process.
I hope these are helpful.
Dundar F. Kocaoglu
=============================================================================
Dundar F. Kocaoglu, Ph.D., Fellow, IEEE
e-mail:
kocaoglu@etm.pdx.edu
Professor & Chair, Engineering and Technology Management Dept.
http://www.etm.pdx.edu
and President & CEO, PICMET
http://www.picmet.org
Portland State University
Phone: +1 503-725-4660
Portland, OR 97207-0751, USA
Fax: +1 503-725-4667
=============================================================================
-----Original Message-----
From: Management Education and Development Discussion
[mailto:
MG-ED-DV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU] On Behalf Of Jacob
Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 2004 5:02 AM
To:
MG-ED-DV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU
Subject: PhD Supervision
Dear Colleagues,
Sometime in the near future I will be embarking on supervising (or co-) my
first PhD student. I am excited about it and looking forward to the
experience. Since this is one skill our (and they may be few exceptions)
academic programs do not prepare us for--at least formally--I felt the need
for researching and identifying some resources that can assist a novice such
as myself with this process.
I was wondering if you had any recommendations of a solid text that is
helpful in this regard. My preference would be for a text that is:
1. Not too long...
2. Combines theoretical/research approach with experiential/first-hand
accounts 3. Specific to Management (or at least Social Sciences).
URLs of web-sites with relevant information would be appreciated as well.
Thanks for advance for your generosity,
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jacob Eisenberg, Ph.D.
Department of Business Administration,
Quinn School of Business,
University College Dublin,
Belfield, Dublin 4,
Ireland
Tel: +353-1-716 4774
Fax: +353-1-716 4762
Email:
Jacob.eisenberg@ucd.ie
http://www.ucd.ie/busadmin/