Research Award to encourage Graduate Students

[kerprof]

Hello kerprof.  I am in the STEM fields and also run a research group that is about your size.  I work at an R1 and generally my students are quite competent and motivated.  That said, none of them could get a project from the start to a paper/conference proceeding without significant mentoring at first. 

I have a general group meeting but I also have subgroup meetings weekly (1-a few students working on a project).  At the subgroup meetings we review what the students did in the past week and the students present their goals for the upcoming week.  I take notes while they are suggesting goals.  At the next meeting we then review their prior week goals in context to what happened.  Of course some weeks we accomplish none of the stated goals as some piece of equipment broke and attention was diverted.  But I think the process of articulating what they hope to accomplish and then coming back next week keeps people fairly focused.  It also helps when we have 2 students working together for each to articulate their priorities and to discuss with each other. We also meet 1-on-1 at the end of the year to have big goals for the upcoming year (conferences they might want to attend, quals, other skills they want to develop etc).

When the students want to work on a paper, we do it in steps.  First we discuss the big picture of the paper.  Then they prepare the 4 main figures and we discuss through those.  Then they write the captions for the figures etc to get a paper.  I do have a senior student who can now produce a standard paper fairly independently but even that student needed a framework at the start.

With my group, presenting at a conference itself is a reward.  Especially with some things hinting at being in person, the students really enjoy having results to share, traveling to a location etc.  They have also really enjoyed seeing their work in print.  I have nominated students for awards etc but that isn't the largest motivation (one should do science for the joy of discovery not to win an award).  My students didn't need motivation but they did need structure in the research process.

Thank you for sharing very helpful insights and experiences...

[Ruralguy]

Yes, important to note, and maybe economists can comment, but you can't really use a small one time incentive to get people over the hump of not understanding enough to get started, or prioritizing other matters. If these problems are common amongst all or many of your students, then as Doc says, you may have to work at mentoring more. That doesn't mean its your fault, just that if you want them to get farther, you probably have to give them more of your own guidance, at least to begin with.

[dismalist]

Yes, important to note, and maybe economists can comment, but you can't really use a small one time incentive to get people over the hump of not understanding enough to get started, or prioritizing other matters. If these problems are common amongst all or many of your students, then as Doc says, you may have to work at mentoring more. That doesn't mean its your fault, just that if you want them to get farther, you probably have to give them more of your own guidance, at least to begin with.

Hegemony gave the economist's answer: The costs outweigh the benefits at the margin.

In my experience, the students are either organized and ambitious, or they're not. We already have several awards like this for various accomplishments. Despite our urging, the students basically ignore them. The amount of money ($100-500) is not high enough to make it worth their while to alter their mode of working, and they are generally so overwhelmed that they just don't have time to consider another thing. This last semester we had a $1000 award that only required a one-page summary of the student's regular research project, and we couldn't get any of them to bother to summarize their project for the award. When I spoke to them, several of them acknowledged that they would have liked the money, but they're too focused on the papers and classes and assignments and prospectuses and all to add one more consideration to their plate.

[Ruralguy]

Makes sense..thanks.

[mamselle]

I'm also getting the sense that the OP tries to work at one remove from the students most of the time.

It seems like their focus is on "getting them to do things" in a mechanical sort of way.

The people I worked for sat down at the computer with the student and hammered out a paragraph or two of corrections before their eyes, so they got the jist of the thing--then left them to do the rest themselves, knowing they'd seen the level expected, 'caught' the energy/urgency required by the speed with which the corrections were done (this guy was lightening fast--he'd have a passive construction out in a minute, and a paragraph where the causality was out of order sorted out in no time).

I know in some other settings--other places, other contexts, like an institute instead of an educational facility, etc.--that might seem too familiar or too hands-on.

But in working with students in a situation where the work has to be done and they have to have a moving picture in mind--of how, and how fast, and in what way--the enacted aesthetics of the thing are more effective, as well as more efficient, because they don't have to be repeated much, if at all, before the assistant "sees" what they need to do.

It's like a demonstration in a dance class.

The teacher does the movement full-out in beginning classes so the class gets the dynamic interactions from step to step, not just a few words and hand gestures to mark a combination.

Once they're more advanced, they can read minds (and hand gestures), but not at the outset.

M.

[quasihumanist]

It sounds like you're trying to get out of having to exercise judgement.  You should be able to subjectively evaluate how your students are doing; you don't need external measures to do it, and, in fact, the external measures should be less accurate than what you can do.

If you think that none of your students measure up, then you need to learn how to tell your students that, without relying on external measures (though you can point to external measures to help make your point).

It might very well be that you simply don't have any students that are as capable as you would like.  Sorry, but you have to work with what you can get.

In mathematics, in many larger departments below the top 10, perhaps around half of the faculty almost never take on a student, generally because they see all the available graduate students as beneath them, or they don't want to develop research sidelines that the available students are able to handle.  (There are certainly areas of mathematical research that I find too complicated and difficult for my brain to handle.)  This is somewhat of a problem for those departments, but they just don't have enough incentives to get faculty to take on students, and, besides, getting unwilling faculty to be advisors doesn't go well.

[bio-nonymous]

Treating students like a biotechnology start-up employee is not going to work. Perhaps, OP, cutting back on students and hiring some professional scientists would help you. A PhD level Research Scientist, lab manager or Research Assistant Professor, alongside a technician or two, would perhaps advance your research agenda further than a gaggle of subpar students (if in fact they are subpar and it is not just a case of you having overly high expectations). IF you could find a smart competent postdoc it might help as well, but IMHO a bad postdoc could be worse for the lab than a bad student... In early career, though, finding a great postdoc is tough, since the best ones (most at least) will be looking for mentors with a track record of placing their postdocs into good jobs--though sometimes if your research is super hot, and you have a lot of $$$ (which you seem to), that would offset inexperience.

Creating a culture of competition within your lab (more so than already naturally exists in grad school) that includes financial incentives (if that is even legal wherever you are) could backfire. A culture of comradery and mutual assistance could get you farther, and would discourage intra-laboratory sabotage. I have been privy to labs with extreme competition where it goes beyond just typical backstabbing and escalates to solutions being tampered with, samples taken out of the freezer and de-thawed, etc.--not good for anyone.

[Caracal]

I'm also getting the sense that the OP tries to work at one remove from the students most of the time.

It seems like their focus is on "getting them to do things" in a mechanical sort of way.

The people I worked for sat down at the computer with the student and hammered out a paragraph or two of corrections before their eyes, so they got the jist of the thing--then left them to do the rest themselves, knowing they'd seen the level expected, 'caught' the energy/urgency required by the speed with which the corrections were done (this guy was lightening fast--he'd have a passive construction out in a minute, and a paragraph where the causality was out of order sorted out in no time).

I know in some other settings--other places, other contexts, like an institute instead of an educational facility, etc.--that might seem too familiar or too hands-on.

But in working with students in a situation where the work has to be done and they have to have a moving picture in mind--of how, and how fast, and in what way--the enacted aesthetics of the thing are more effective, as well as more efficient, because they don't have to be repeated much, if at all, before the assistant "sees" what they need to do.

It's like a demonstration in a dance class.

The teacher does the movement full-out in beginning classes so the class gets the dynamic interactions from step to step, not just a few words and hand gestures to mark a combination.

Once they're more advanced, they can read minds (and hand gestures), but not at the outset.

M.

Yeah, I think there's a lot to this. I've never advised grad students so I only know this stuff from the other side, but it seemed to me like it was very difficult to get the right balance. On one hand, you had advisors who struck me as too prescriptive who had a tendency to micromanage students or demoralize them. Other advisors who took an approach closer to what Mamselle is describing were very good when students were motivated and paid attention to their cues. However, they often didn't have a plan B when their students didn't seem to pay much attention to their cues, or got stuck. I'm sure it's hard to figure out how and when to switch gears.

I'm not sure this kind of feedback is really helpful for the OP, but it does seem like you often end up getting stuck between competing impulses. I learned from undergrad teaching, that that's actually the worst thing you can do. It's like giving students extensions. You should either have some very clear policy covering almost all eventualities that you only deviate from in very unusual circumstances, or you should just give a lot of extensions and make it clear to students that you'll do that. There's a perfect mean somewhere in there, but the worst approach is to have language on the syllabus about no late papers in any circumstances, not really be willing to enforce that, and then getting grumpy with students when they ask for extensions or turn things in late without actually imposing penalties.

[mleok]

It sounds like you're trying to get out of having to exercise judgement.  You should be able to subjectively evaluate how your students are doing; you don't need external measures to do it, and, in fact, the external measures should be less accurate than what you can do.

If you think that none of your students measure up, then you need to learn how to tell your students that, without relying on external measures (though you can point to external measures to help make your point).

It might very well be that you simply don't have any students that are as capable as you would like.  Sorry, but you have to work with what you can get.

In mathematics, in many larger departments below the top 10, perhaps around half of the faculty almost never take on a student, generally because they see all the available graduate students as beneath them, or they don't want to develop research sidelines that the available students are able to handle.  (There are certainly areas of mathematical research that I find too complicated and difficult for my brain to handle.)  This is somewhat of a problem for those departments, but they just don't have enough incentives to get faculty to take on students, and, besides, getting unwilling faculty to be advisors doesn't go well.

My math department is within the top 20, and there are certainly faculty in my department who almost never take on students. We're in a very nice coastal location, and we do have some truly standout faculty, so those two do help with recruitment efforts. I think it's more the case that some of the faculty who never have students have too high expectations relative to their standing within their subfield in the department.

When you're below the top 10, you need to tap your network of colleagues at potential feeder programs, and have them send you their excellent students who are a good fit for your research program. It also helps to have a robustly funded individual research program. I have benefitted from both of that, in large part because my research involves a relatively rare combination of techniques, so there isn't as much competition within the United States. It's also sufficiently applicable that my PhD students are not tied to academia.