helping doc students to progress

[bluefooted]

Seeking advice and tricks...

I am a new-ish assistant professor (in the humanities) and a few of my doc students have started their dissertation milestones (qualifying exam/paper, dissertation proposal). What I am seeing is that they aren't progressing on getting them done. I am worried that they are going to stall out (while also expecting/hoping me to fund them). They are great people and they do my research work for/with me. They just don't seem to move on their own work.

Things I have tried: 1) setting up a schedule with them of weekly writing goals and times (they make it but then don't stick to it), 2) offering detailed feedback on sections of writing - I don't require a full draft (they start doing this but then stop sending me stuff), 3) weekly short check-in meetings (which become them telling me inperson/online that they aren't progressing), 4) weekly co-writing times where we sit and write together (which they start to miss).

I really am trying to be supportive! I try to be encouraging! I didn't require any of this structure from my advisor, so even these things seem extra-ordinary, but I really want my people to succeed! Help!

[Parasaurolophus]

That all sounds great. But maybe the frequency is too high, and they're burning out early? It can take a while to move out of the coursework habit of writing papers until all hours of the night/morning, and into the professional habit of doing a little every day, usually earlier in the day.

Beyond educating them about good research and writing habits, and giving them opportunities to put that newfound knowledge into practice, there's not much you can do.

[onthefringe]

Oh, I feel this (though since I'm in a lab science, the writing part is generally a couple of big pushes near the end. What I want to do is lock them in a room that provides food in return for words typed, but in the absence of that, I have not found much of anything that works for more than a short time. Setting up an accountability group with other peers (not me) has helped some of them.

[Wahoo Redux]

From my experience, a person is either highly motivated to finish the diss or not highly motivated.  A lot of people were great students at the undergrad and grad levels because they were good with short-term goals, working under deadline, and the types of assignments they had done throughout their education.  The dissertation is its own kind of animal.  It takes a great deal of discipline and, even more than that, deep-set internal motivation.

I had the world's greatest chair, and part of his power was quick and thorough no nonsense comments, but hu never tried to lock me in a room----it was up to me to write and research. 

Let them come to you.  Good luck.

[research_prof]

Seeking advice and tricks...

I am a new-ish assistant professor (in the humanities) and a few of my doc students have started their dissertation milestones (qualifying exam/paper, dissertation proposal). What I am seeing is that they aren't progressing on getting them done. I am worried that they are going to stall out (while also expecting/hoping me to fund them). They are great people and they do my research work for/with me. They just don't seem to move on their own work.

Things I have tried: 1) setting up a schedule with them of weekly writing goals and times (they make it but then don't stick to it), 2) offering detailed feedback on sections of writing - I don't require a full draft (they start doing this but then stop sending me stuff), 3) weekly short check-in meetings (which become them telling me inperson/online that they aren't progressing), 4) weekly co-writing times where we sit and write together (which they start to miss).

I really am trying to be supportive! I try to be encouraging! I didn't require any of this structure from my advisor, so even these things seem extra-ordinary, but I really want my people to succeed! Help!

Something that got me a bit baffled: what do these two statements mean?

"They are great people and they do my research work for/with me. They just don't seem to move on their own work."

How can "your" research work be different than the work of one of your PhD students? I thought PhD students are supposed to do supervised research, so at this point you establish a research group and research becomes a common goal between advisors and students. Am I missing something here? Are things different in humanities compared to other fields?

[bluefooted]

Yeah, I think it differs for each field.  For my field, RAs work (and are paid to work) on my research projects but they are responsible for their own dissertation. They can "piggyback" on my research projects (same group of participants, parallel/tangential research questions) but their work is their own. They collect, analyze, and write-up their own data (with lots of advice from me at each stage).  This is different than them working on my projects and papers and having that "count" as theirs.  Also, in my field for tenure, papers with my students is important, but I still need to be publishing my own work as first author.

[research_prof]

Yeah, I think it differs for each field.  For my field, RAs work (and are paid to work) on my research projects but they are responsible for their own dissertation. They can "piggyback" on my research projects (same group of participants, parallel/tangential research questions) but their work is their own. They collect, analyze, and write-up their own data (with lots of advice from me at each stage).  This is different than them working on my projects and papers and having that "count" as theirs.  Also, in my field for tenure, papers with my students is important, but I still need to be publishing my own work as first author.

Makes sense then. Sorry, I was not aware of that :-)

[Parasaurolophus]

Seeking advice and tricks...

I am a new-ish assistant professor (in the humanities) and a few of my doc students have started their dissertation milestones (qualifying exam/paper, dissertation proposal). What I am seeing is that they aren't progressing on getting them done. I am worried that they are going to stall out (while also expecting/hoping me to fund them). They are great people and they do my research work for/with me. They just don't seem to move on their own work.

Things I have tried: 1) setting up a schedule with them of weekly writing goals and times (they make it but then don't stick to it), 2) offering detailed feedback on sections of writing - I don't require a full draft (they start doing this but then stop sending me stuff), 3) weekly short check-in meetings (which become them telling me inperson/online that they aren't progressing), 4) weekly co-writing times where we sit and write together (which they start to miss).

I really am trying to be supportive! I try to be encouraging! I didn't require any of this structure from my advisor, so even these things seem extra-ordinary, but I really want my people to succeed! Help!

Something that got me a bit baffled: what do these two statements mean?

"They are great people and they do my research work for/with me. They just don't seem to move on their own work."

How can "your" research work be different than the work of one of your PhD students? I thought PhD students are supposed to do supervised research, so at this point you establish a research group and research becomes a common goal between advisors and students. Am I missing something here? Are things different in humanities compared to other fields?

Yes, it's different. In my humanities field, stipends come from the department, not the supervisor. Stipends are lower than the sciences--at or slightly below the poverty level is normal, though they're higher at Harvard. Supervisors mostly don't have grants, because grants mostly don't exist for us. And a PhD student's research project is entirely their own. Your supervisor is an expert in your subfield, but your projects are entirely self-directed.

[Mobius]

Funding is 4-5 years, right? After coursework and comprehensive exams, there isn't much time to defend a prospectus and write a dissertation. Eventually, those who fall behind just run out of funding.

I don't know what they expect their advisor to do regarding funding.

If you're students aren't progressing at the same rate as the norm for the department as a whole, you might have to do some serious introspection as to why your students don't finish in a timely manner. If not, all you can do is try to keep them accountable. I found not having funding after 5 years to be a hell of a motivator to finish and get a job.

[Parasaurolophus]

Funding is 4-5 years, right? After coursework and comprehensive exams, there isn't much time to defend a prospectus and write a dissertation. Eventually, those who fall behind just run out of funding.

I don't know what they expect their advisor to do regarding funding.

If you're students aren't progressing at the same rate as the norm for the department as a whole, you might have to do some serious introspection as to why your students don't finish in a timely manner. If not, all you can do is try to keep them accountable. I found not having funding after 5 years to be a hell of a motivator to finish and get a job.

The trouble is that a five-year clock doesn't motivate supervisors to take less than six months to a year to read a single chapter and give you feedback on it.

[Mobius]

My advice to grad students is don't stop working on other chapters while the supervisor is reading one.

A supervisor who takes six months to provide feedback on a chapter needs a talking to by a department chair or a dean, but how often does that happen?

[mamselle]

It happens.

M.

[Caracal]

Hard to know what's going on from the outside, but it might be worth trying to get a sense from colleagues about how reasonable your expectations are.

It is really hard to push full out for six years straight and most people I know hit natural lulls in the process. You should expect, for example, that people who finish their exams might take a few months to reset and get to work on dissertation research. Most grad students are people in their 20s and so there can also be life events-good and bad-that get in the way. I know quite a few people with tenure track jobs who got married, got divorced (or both!), had a baby, moved out of state, etc.

Of course, you don't want those lulls to last too long and it is important that students don't feel like nobody cares about their progress or lack thereof. However, you do want to sometimes give students a little room. Same with the weekly meetings. A lot depends on your field, but that would have been too much for me. Most weeks I wouldn't have had anything to report except "still writing that chapter" or "plugging away down in the microfilm room."

Again, a lot depends on your field, but sometimes pressures coming from sources other than you can be helpful. Do you ever do works in progress seminars with grad students? I know that one of the thing that helped me get stuff done was putting my name on the schedule for those seminars when I was working on a chapter. It would have felt like a bigger deal to have to write everyone and tell them I wouldn't have the chapter in time, than it would have to just tell that to my advisor.

[Mobius]

According to NSF surveys, median time to get a doctorate in the humanities is 6.8 years. We know funding doesn't usually cover that. I'd look at peer programs and see what their median times to completion are.

[Wahoo Redux]

According to NSF surveys, median time to get a doctorate in the humanities is 6.8 years. We know funding doesn't usually cover that. I'd look at peer programs and see what their median times to completion are.

Many humanities doctorates are finished while candidates work as adjuncts.  Often funding is extended.