On constructive supervision

[mleok]

I should mention that one thing I did last summer was that I had a bunch of orphaned manuscripts which required revisions and additional work to be publishable, and the graduate students who had started working on them had graduated and are now in industry jobs. So, I got my new graduate students to work on finishing these papers up, paired up based on their initial research interests. This was quite productive, as it gave them something concrete to do, with relatively short-term rewards, and allowed them to learn some basic professional skills. After they had done this, I then revisited the question of research interests, and set them up with research topics of their own.

Noted. I am very enthusiastic about a couple such orphans.

Sorry to derail the thread with a stupid question from someone far away from the discipline, but does this work because everyone gets an author credit on these? It's good for the students who started the papers because if someone else picks it up, and does the revisions they get a line in their CV for something they were never going to have time to finish themselves?

If so that makes me a little jealous. I have a revise and resubmit that has long since expired. I put together the article from some dissertation pieces at a point when I was on the market and it would have been a nice thing to have on my CV. By the time I had some breathing space to work on revising the paper, I wasn't on the market anymore and it seemed like I should be spending any research time I had working on writing a book. I can't see myself ever doing much with that paper again, which is sort of a shame. If there was some world where a grad student in need of a manageable project could take my manuscript, fix it up and send it off and we both get credit for it, that would be great...

There are obviously lots of reasons collaboration is different in the sciences and humanities, but I do sometimes think that if you were designing a system from the ground up it might be good to incorporate some elements of the collaboration process into humanities work.

Yes, everyone gets author credit on the paper. In one of the recent cases, there were very substantial changes and additions to the manuscript, and the new student became the first author on the paper.

[mleok]

There are obviously lots of reasons collaboration is different in the sciences and humanities, but I do sometimes think that if you were designing a system from the ground up it might be good to incorporate some elements of the collaboration process into humanities work.

I strongly suspect that if collaboration was more commonly accepted in the humanities, advisors would be better about commenting on drafts, and more invested in ensuring that their students are adequately supported financially. As it stands, it seems like there's very little incentive for advisors in the humanities to invest in their student's success.

[Caracal]

There are obviously lots of reasons collaboration is different in the sciences and humanities, but I do sometimes think that if you were designing a system from the ground up it might be good to incorporate some elements of the collaboration process into humanities work.

I strongly suspect that if collaboration was more commonly accepted in the humanities, advisors would be better about commenting on drafts, and more invested in ensuring that their students are adequately supported financially. As it stands, it seems like there's very little incentive for advisors in the humanities to invest in their student's success.

The incentives wouldn't really line up the way you imagine I think. Science runs on grant money because labs are expensive. You can't do research without lots of money, both for equipment and people. Research costs for people in the humanities are much, much lower. In most fields, the most important currency is books (there can be exceptions) Even if there was a system where advisors got author credits for student work they collaborated on, it wouldn't really make much difference for tenured faculty. You are going to get a better job through writing some respected book, not being listed as an author on a bunch of journal articles grad students wrote.

I think you also underestimate factors other than author credits and funding. Professional pride, a desire to create a legacy and enjoying doing your job are big incentives for many advisors in the humanities. Tenured faculty often have little financial incentive to do more than the minimum in terms of teaching undergrads. However, I would wager that a large majority go far beyond what's required.

[Caracal]

I should mention that one thing I did last summer was that I had a bunch of orphaned manuscripts which required revisions and additional work to be publishable, and the graduate students who had started working on them had graduated and are now in industry jobs. So, I got my new graduate students to work on finishing these papers up, paired up based on their initial research interests. This was quite productive, as it gave them something concrete to do, with relatively short-term rewards, and allowed them to learn some basic professional skills. After they had done this, I then revisited the question of research interests, and set them up with research topics of their own.

Noted. I am very enthusiastic about a couple such orphans.

Sorry to derail the thread with a stupid question from someone far away from the discipline, but does this work because everyone gets an author credit on these? It's good for the students who started the papers because if someone else picks it up, and does the revisions they get a line in their CV for something they were never going to have time to finish themselves?

If so that makes me a little jealous. I have a revise and resubmit that has long since expired. I put together the article from some dissertation pieces at a point when I was on the market and it would have been a nice thing to have on my CV. By the time I had some breathing space to work on revising the paper, I wasn't on the market anymore and it seemed like I should be spending any research time I had working on writing a book. I can't see myself ever doing much with that paper again, which is sort of a shame. If there was some world where a grad student in need of a manageable project could take my manuscript, fix it up and send it off and we both get credit for it, that would be great...

There are obviously lots of reasons collaboration is different in the sciences and humanities, but I do sometimes think that if you were designing a system from the ground up it might be good to incorporate some elements of the collaboration process into humanities work.

Yes, everyone gets author credit on the paper. In one of the recent cases, there were very substantial changes and additions to the manuscript, and the new student became the first author on the paper.

But yes, I do think it would be nice if there was more institutionalized collaboration in the humanities. When the norm is that one person does all of the work from start to finish, you can end up with lots of work getting lost along the way and lots of missed opportunities for people to develop skills as they go.

[mleok]

The incentives wouldn't really line up the way you imagine I think. Science runs on grant money because labs are expensive. You can't do research without lots of money, both for equipment and people. Research costs for people in the humanities are much, much lower. In most fields, the most important currency is books (there can be exceptions) Even if there was a system where advisors got author credits for student work they collaborated on, it wouldn't really make much difference for tenured faculty. You are going to get a better job through writing some respected book, not being listed as an author on a bunch of journal articles grad students wrote.

I think you also underestimate factors other than author credits and funding. Professional pride, a desire to create a legacy and enjoying doing your job are big incentives for many advisors in the humanities. Tenured faculty often have little financial incentive to do more than the minimum in terms of teaching undergrads. However, I would wager that a large majority go far beyond what's required.

I think it's not an issue of grant funding, as opposed to the the book field vs. journal field cultural differences. I'm a mathematician, and as far as STEM faculty go, we're only incrementally more expensive than a philosophy professor, you know the joke about also needing a waste paper basket...

It's hard to rely on "legacy" as a mechanism for getting professors to dedicate themselves to mentoring PhD students when most of them will never get a secure, full-time academic position, much less one at a PhD granting institution that will allow them to intellectually reproduce. The fact that the research interests of the student and advisor are much less aligned in the humanities also makes it less of an intellectual legacy. In any case, I am simply pointing to the additional incentives in place in other fields to make faculty more invested in the success of their students than purely altruistic motivations, or ones stemming from pride in a job well done.

[Caracal]

It's hard to rely on "legacy" as a mechanism for getting professors to dedicate themselves to mentoring PhD students when most of them will never get a secure, full-time academic position, much less one at a PhD granting institution that will allow them to intellectually reproduce.

About half of PHD recipients in history get tenure track jobs. At higher ranked institutions, the number goes up in to the high 60s often. You're right that many of those jobs are not going to be at institutions producing grad students, but some will be, and even if people aren't mentoring grad students of their own they are still producing scholarly work.

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

I think it's not an issue of grant funding, as opposed to the the book field vs. journal field cultural differences. I'm a mathematician, and as far as STEM faculty go, we're only incrementally more expensive than a philosophy professor, you know the joke about also needing a waste paper basket...

I thought that mathematicians tend to have few co-authors. Though, my source is not the most reputable -  http://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1911. If this is the case this would support the correlation between number of co-authors and amount of money needed to get projects done.

[mleok]

I think it's not an issue of grant funding, as opposed to the the book field vs. journal field cultural differences. I'm a mathematician, and as far as STEM faculty go, we're only incrementally more expensive than a philosophy professor, you know the joke about also needing a waste paper basket...

I thought that mathematicians tend to have few co-authors. Though, my source is not the most reputable -  http://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1911. If this is the case this would support the correlation between number of co-authors and amount of money needed to get projects done.

Yes, mathematicians tend to have fewer co-authors, and it makes sense that fields which require substantial financial resources to conduct research tend to be structured in a way where larger groups of researchers work on a single, large, funded research program.

[Caracal]

I think it's not an issue of grant funding, as opposed to the the book field vs. journal field cultural differences. I'm a mathematician, and as far as STEM faculty go, we're only incrementally more expensive than a philosophy professor, you know the joke about also needing a waste paper basket...

I thought that mathematicians tend to have few co-authors. Though, my source is not the most reputable -  http://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1911. If this is the case this would support the correlation between number of co-authors and amount of money needed to get projects done.

Yes, mathematicians tend to have fewer co-authors, and it makes sense that fields which require substantial financial resources to conduct research tend to be structured in a way where larger groups of researchers work on a single, large, funded research program.

And other STEM fields used to be less resource intensive right? My impression has always been that in the 1930s you could have a world class physics lab with just a professor, a grad student or two and a lab tech, but maybe that's mistaken.

[Caracal]

I think it's not an issue of grant funding, as opposed to the the book field vs. journal field cultural differences. I'm a mathematician, and as far as STEM faculty go, we're only incrementally more expensive than a philosophy professor, you know the joke about also needing a waste paper basket...

I thought that mathematicians tend to have few co-authors. Though, my source is not the most reputable -  http://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1911. If this is the case this would support the correlation between number of co-authors and amount of money needed to get projects done.

But there is still a substantial amount of collaboration right? And the ability for one person to take someone else's partial proof or something and complete it and they both can get credit? That's the part that I wish we had more of in the humanities. One of the problems about fields where collaboration isn't necessary is that you end up with this model of the lone scholar toiling away at the whole process from inspiration to final editing. That can sometimes be fine, but it also leads to lost work and missed opportunities. The other

[mamselle]

....a missed opportunity, there....

M.

[Caracal]

....a missed opportunity, there....

M.

Exactly, wouldn't it be better if someone could just come in, decide what I was going to say, and complete the post.

[Puget]

To bring things back a bit to the original topic, I do think you need to recognize that most grad students are not going to be you. That is, you are the one who made it into a research-focused TT position, so there is a big selection bias if you are comparing what people like you were like as grad students vs. your own grad students. That's going to be true everywhere pretty much.

Once you realize that, it's a matter of figuring out students' strengths and interests, and using those to best advantage for both you and them. What can they do that will push your research program forward while also preparing them for whatever career they are aiming at? What skills do they need and want to work on to get there?  Make an individual development plan (IDP) with each student every year to help map that out.

You need there buy-in-- it needs to be about their education and goals, not your needs. After all, they are grad students, not staff. If you just need stuff done, staff (research assistant, lab manager, postdocs) are the way to go if you can afford them.

....a missed opportunity, there....

M.

Exactly, wouldn't it be better if someone could just come in, decide what I was going to say, and complete the post.

I have to say, as someone in a field where sole author publications are exceedingly rare, it is hard for me to understand why anyone would want to do research alone. Almost everything I like about my job has to do with working with other people. If I'm feeling burnt out, the best cure is always to talk some science with a collaborator or two. Besides being more fun, working with other smart people with complementary expertise always makes the research better, and helps us all keep growing our knowledge base and skillset.

[mleok]

I do think you need to recognize that most grad students are not going to be you.

Yes, one of my former postdocs often made that point to me.

[quasihumanist]

It's true that, in fields where advisors don't tend to get author credit for the work of advisees, we sometimes hear horror stories about advisors who neglect their advisees.

On the other hand, in fields where advisors do tend to get author credit for the work of advisees, we sometimes hear horror stories about advisors who abuse their advisees, for example by keeping them from graduating so that they can get more work out of them.

Thankfully (although not so thankfully for the victims), both kinds of horror stories are rare.