Graduate student (PhD/MS Thesis) engagement plan

[kerprof]

I am slowly building the research group from 1 PhD student in Spring 2021 to 3 PhD students in Fall 2022 and to 5 PhD students and 1 MS student in Spring 2022.

To ensure the structured engagement/mentoring, I am thinking of having one on one meeting (at least 30 minutes) with the graduate students and
one group/lab meeting (at least  for 1 hour) every week.

My planned agenda during the one on one meeting will be to gather the current status, identify any issues and
advise the work forward. The planned agenda for the group/lab meeting is that at most 1 student will present their research work. That way each student will have the opportunity to present at least twice during the semester. Please advise if I need to alter my agenda in anyways.

Please advise such  a regular engagement plan will be good enough for the student, myself and lab to be successful.

[Puget]

I don't think there is a one size fits all plan, but this is pretty standard.
Completing IDPs with all students at least once a year is also critical (I know we've discussed this before).

For what it's worth, I've found that it works better to have a block of time in which I do individual meetings back-to-back, rather than scheduling half hour slots with each student. This is more efficient as not every student needs half an hour each week-- I at least briefly check in with everyone, but especially for some of the senior students it may just be a very brief update if they are working away without problems. Other times, a student may need a much longer meeting.

Of course, there is also lots of non-meeting time devoted to commenting on drafts, and my lab also uses slack heavily for day to day stuff that comes up (quick questions, troubleshooting).

[Ruralguy]

I also think this is standard. Its what I did as both a grad student and post-doc. I preferred longer meetings with my adviser, but I probably had several weeks go by where I basically just popped in with very short comments or pleas for advice, rather than formal meeting. But I was always working on a paper/formal dissertation/both, he (my adviser) was always looking at some sort of product from me. As a post-doc, I think things tended to be more formal so that we'd actually catch each other and talk, but there were drop ins there too.

That being said, I think the basic structure of group and individual meetings is a good idea, particularly for natural scientists, but I suppose it could work for some others as well, as long as collaborative work is being done.

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

I am slowly building the research group from 1 PhD student in Spring 2021 to 3 PhD students in Fall 2022 and to 5 PhD students and 1 MS student in Spring 2022.

Just a note: going from 1 to 5 PhD students in 1 year is far from "slowly".
Also, effort to maintain PhD students increases over time as they go from course work to actually writing / doing research. Having 5 students simultaneously hit advanced stages can dramatically increase your workload. A related problem can be departmental funding expiration (if applicable): do you feel ready to support, say, 4 students simultaneously at some point in the future?

My planned agenda during the one on one meeting will be to gather the current status, identify any issues and
advise the work forward. The planned agenda for the group/lab meeting is that at most 1 student will present their research work. That way each student will have the opportunity to present at least twice during the semester. Please advise if I need to alter my agenda in anyways.

- students may be reluctant to publicly voice problems
- an interesting option I encountered is to gather information beforehand and just presenting "state of the lab" slides followed by a rotating presentation by one of the students

Please advise such  a regular engagement plan will be good enough for the student, myself and lab to be successful.

I would claim regular group meetings are "necessary, but not sufficient" criteria.
They are a good way to get overview, but far from enough. However, the optimum plan for additional interactions is dependent on project-specific and student-specific factors.

[Ruralguy]

Group meetings won't save any particular student, but they will help students gain a bit of perspective which can help with morale and a sense of belonging. It might sound like bs, but individual students in grad school can end up feeling isolated, and this will help them, at least in this sphere of their life, not quite feel that way.

[mamselle]

Thats when all the good parties get planned, too.

Well, these days, not so much...

M.

[mleok]

I currently have 5 PhD students, and I talk with each of them individually for 1 hour each week. I do not have weekly group meetings, but that's because they're working on very different things. However, we have a weekly seminar where graduate students present their research, but it's not just my students. I do however encourage my students to talk to each other one-on-one if there are areas of overlap.

[research_prof]

I follow the same model: each senior PhD student gets an 1-hour 1-on-1 weekly meeting with me, each junior PhD student and MS student gets a 30-minute 1-on-1 weekly meeting with me. We also have a weekly group meeting, where we discusse each student's weekly report (what they worked on, what issues they have, what they will work on next week). I think I will also add a paper reading club once every 2 weeks to "force" my students to read more papers... I typically pair each MS student with a PhD student, so that each PhD student has a side project and each MS student has someone to talk to when needed during the week.

I supervise 3 PhD and 3 MS students as of now.

[mythbuster]

This is much the plan I use now. Now my PhD advisor did NOT have formal weekly 1 on 1 meetings, but that's because he came into the lab everyday and chatted with each person in the lab. He'd even jump in to help with tricky techniques. "How's it going?" became an in lab joke as that was his greeting when he cam in the room. But I miss it now. He was a great mentor, and not just for the science stuff- his question encompassed both the science and how you were doing as a person. So if you want to be really hands on- that's the approach to take

[kerprof]

I attended research mentoring workshop couple of weeks back...

In that workshop, there was a discussion on having regularly scheduled "Writing Circle" and "Reading Circle", where the PhD/MS Thesis students get together for research related writing and reading research related papers over Zoom or in person on a regular basis.

Please advise your thoughts/experiences on this?

[arcturus]

I attended research mentoring workshop couple of weeks back...

In that workshop, there was a discussion on having regularly scheduled "Writing Circle" and "Reading Circle", where the PhD/MS Thesis students get together for research related writing and reading research related papers over Zoom or in person on a regular basis.

Please advise your thoughts/experiences on this?

These are all the rage now-a-days. There are various formats, from those that include peer review of work in progress to those that are merely accountability groups. They work best when the participants are voluntary. So, you could organize such sessions for all of the grad students in your program (i.e., not just for your own students). If you do this successfully for some time, you should be able to hand it off to an ambitious (and organized!) graduate student for them to organize their peers in future terms.

[Puget]

I attended research mentoring workshop couple of weeks back...

In that workshop, there was a discussion on having regularly scheduled "Writing Circle" and "Reading Circle", where the PhD/MS Thesis students get together for research related writing and reading research related papers over Zoom or in person on a regular basis.

Please advise your thoughts/experiences on this?

These are all the rage now-a-days. There are various formats, from those that include peer review of work in progress to those that are merely accountability groups. They work best when the participants are voluntary. So, you could organize such sessions for all of the grad students in your program (i.e., not just for your own students). If you do this successfully for some time, you should be able to hand it off to an ambitious (and organized!) graduate student for them to organize their peers in future terms.

I run a writing group for my department-- my students are expected to attend, others join voluntarily. It's been quite useful I think, and several graduated students have told me it was really helpful when they were dissertating. I highly recommend this book: https://osf.io/n8pc3/

[kerprof]

I attended research mentoring workshop couple of weeks back...

In that workshop, there was a discussion on having regularly scheduled "Writing Circle" and "Reading Circle", where the PhD/MS Thesis students get together for research related writing and reading research related papers over Zoom or in person on a regular basis.

Please advise your thoughts/experiences on this?

These are all the rage now-a-days. There are various formats, from those that include peer review of work in progress to those that are merely accountability groups. They work best when the participants are voluntary. So, you could organize such sessions for all of the grad students in your program (i.e., not just for your own students). If you do this successfully for some time, you should be able to hand it off to an ambitious (and organized!) graduate student for them to organize their peers in future terms.

I run a writing group for my department-- my students are expected to attend, others join voluntarily. It's been quite useful I think, and several graduated students have told me it was really helpful when they were dissertating. I highly recommend this book: https://osf.io/n8pc3/

Thanks for the reference book... It looks useful resource.

What is the frequency of these writing group meetings... Is it weekly or daily or bi-weekly or monthly...

Does the meeting happen in person or over online (say Zoom)...   What time slot the group meets ? Is that a challenge in finding a time slot that will work for everyone..

[kerprof]

In the research mentoring workshop that I attended, the facilitator recommended the following weekly tracking documents for each of the mentee...

Weekly 15/5 document - which  is patterned after a similar technique done by Yvon Chouinard founder of Patagonia.
Reference: https://www.inc.com/leigh-buchanan/patagonia-founder-yvon-chouinard-15five.html
https://qz.com/work/1516573/the-5-15-is-an-easy-way-to-improve-communication-at-work/

In this document the following responses are tracked

1) Significant accomplishments for the week
2) Hours worked during the week
3) Any problems encountered
4) Goals for the coming week
5) Anything that they would like to talk to me about

I am planning to use a running document per student for the whole semester and see how it goes. This document can also help engage with the weekly meeting...

Please advise your thoughts/experience on using such a document. while working with your graduate student advisees.

[kerprof]

One participant in the research mentoring workshop mentioned that they track daily running document per student with the following
details over the whole semester. They mentioned that they have a small team and told that this should work for small teams.

In this running document, each day student summarize research work and meetings.

including Date: and Hours worked:



For the research following details are tracked as applicable for that day on what they worked

Literature Review:
Reference -
Purpose of Paper:
Summary of Paper:
Key Points:
References to Papers:
Conclusions Drawn:
Questions Raised:
________________________________________

Experiments:

Materials:
Procedure:
1.   
________________________________________

Data Table:

________________________________________
Graph:

________________________________________
Evaluation:
________________________________________
Conclusion:
_______________________________________


For the meeting minutes, following details are tracked as applicable if they attend the meeting

Meeting Minutes
Date:
Summary:
Actions:


I am thinking of enforcing this semester for the students and use this for the weekly meeting with the student as well.
Please advise your thoughts/experiences on using such a document to engage the graduate student mentees.