Are you okay with continuing to see your current advisor on a regular basis? Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. Do you want to successfully complete your PhD? They know him. Harassment, discrimination, or abuse, even in milder forms, constitute a breach of good scientific practice. When it comes to student satisfaction, the single most important element is adviser supportiveness, according to a study published this week in Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top, Not the answer you're looking for? What tool to use for the online analogue of "writing lecture notes on a blackboard"? In this case, the financing is independent from the supervisor. (Also, there is a reason your advisor is called an advisor.) I'm generally a bit concerned about trying to strike the right balance between good curation and accessibility. 2- Talk to new potential advisor in private. But if that's the only thing you take into consideration, you could wind up having a terrible experience in graduate school. Is Koestler's The Sleepwalkers still well regarded? Well let you know what makes PhD candidates want to change advisors, what you should consider in the process, and whether it makes sense in your situation or not. Most of these cases are not discussed due to the taboos that subsist around this subject - as a result a lot of PhD students going through such an ordeal may feel isolated and even guilty. That is one of the topics to discuss here. Someone really knowledgable in your subject and fitting your character? Changing thesis supervisor to avoid bad letter of recommendation from current supervisor? Good supervision is extremely important, so overcoming some obstacles in order to replace a less than good supervisor can be absolutely worthwhile! How do I fit an e-hub motor axle that is too big? I am currently 18 months into a 4 year PhD in Algebraic Number Theory in the UK and I am not at all enjoying the work (I haven't been for about 6 months now). Much as you may want to yell your decision over the rooftops, announcing that youre leaving while in a heated argument with your advisor isnt going to make your transition any easier. @Damodar You don't need to bad mouth him. In this way, you work in a field you already know at a moderate pace, while you develop new skills. Is there a canonical answer about selecting a journal for publication? You are e.g. He forced his Post Doc student as my another supervisor in order to fast track his career, without any kind of discussion with me. Gerhard "Certainly Start With Internet Search" Paseman, 2017.10.30. However it is sometimes necessary and in the best of cases this is resolved professionally, without any bad blood. I am forced to continue on previous PhDs, which I did and have satisfied. You can review our privacy policy, cookie policy and terms and conditions online. It would be a good idea to take a vacation before. from computer science to humanities). As just one example: A supervisor of one of the PhD participants in our courses published an article with data from the PhD candidates research without that persons knowledge or consent. Stack Exchange network consists of 181 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, . MathOverflow is a question and answer site for professional mathematicians. 10: Good PhD-supervision, we discuss 5 pillars of great supervision and describe what you can expect from a good supervisor. It depends on his relationship to his colleagues and position within the department if he can make good of his threats. In addition, postdoctoral groups, such as YPA, may . How do you get out of a corner when plotting yourself into a corner. 1) When choosing advisor When you apply for your project, make sure you enquire about your prospective advisor. Regardless of this persons level of involvement, her advice will undoubtedly be helpful in your switch. Yeah, I would agree with @AtomJZ's concern if we could point to (m)any examples of high-quality answers from the last 10 years that specifically address the nuances of the field pairing in question. Now I do exclusively software engineering. But don't think that such a calling is necessarily tied to a career in academia, because I think that this is increasingly not the case, and probably never really was. Some of these advisors worked closely with the previous advisor, or were part of the student's thesis committee. In fact, this desire not to rock the boat is exactly what allows perpetrators to foster. These will normally include meeting to discuss your work, reading drafts and being available to respond emails and other forms of contact within a reasonable timeframe. In one case the P.I. If your relationship with your supervisor is good and if (s)he is not too super-specialized in one sub-area, you might be able to just move to a different sub-area while continuing to work with the same supervisor. All rights reserved. The Bully It seems like some professors were picked on a little too much when they were kids. Does that justify some committees leaving their students to their own devices and not supporting them during this transition? These are all factors to consider. Ask if this is possible. Why does the impeller of torque converter sit behind the turbine? In most cases, a change of supervisor is possible, but there are a few things that need consideration. I dont want to scare you, but if you are a similar situation you have to be prepared. Academia Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for academics and those enrolled in higher education. To figure out what a professor's approach to advising is, Sverdlik encourages students to ask a lot of questions of prospective advisers and their advisees when they're interviewing. @FourierFlux Based on your history of questions, I suspect you don't really care what people think so I don't know why you keep asking here. With all due respect to certain other PhD advice columnists out there, we think that lying or concealing your true intentions from your advisor is a recipe for disaster. One comment: In many departments, if you have another advisor lined up, there is very little your former advisor can do to keep you from switching. In all the stories I read, there was a forest of unfortunate circumstances that brought people to change advisor. Are there conventions to indicate a new item in a list? But now These professors want revenge. Multiple people I talked to were even harassed by their previous advisors, some were called names in collaboration emails, others found that their science results were in limbo and couldnt get published as their previous P.I.s made claims over their work even though they hadnt contributed. The most you should say about your adviser is that your working styles clash, and you would need a little more freedom to chose methods and explore your own ideas. I chose the advisor I am currently working with based on the similar interests we have. A lack of supervision includes insufficient guidance and support and irregular interaction or feedback on the progress of a PhD project. (about changing fields post-PhD) that we would want to preserve / curate / generate / leave . Research topics restricted to students at top universities? Can you keep the parts of the thesis you have completed? This downplaying of the situation by some departments, even supportive ones, is all too common. Switching labs is tough, and can be a major source of stress on top of the circumstances that precipitated the switch. If I do work with another supervisor at this stage, what could be the challenges? If you have family, you have to make sure they understand that you were forced to switch advisers and you might finish the PhD later. How to know if somebody else is also working on your problem? Not the answer you're looking for? At what point of what we watch as the MCU movies the branching started? Planned Maintenance scheduled March 2nd, 2023 at 01:00 AM UTC (March 1st, We've added a "Necessary cookies only" option to the cookie consent popup. Any disadvantages of having a PhD supervisor who is working only part-time at the institution? It does not help me. Otherwise, my assumption is that it's possible to write one answer that addresses most/all possible switches (the advice for intra-field switches vs. switching to a remote field might be different, but we can address both in one post). But the latest research on the topic points to things to look for when making a decision, as well as pitfalls to avoid. Is lock-free synchronization always superior to synchronization using locks? Dericks and his colleagues homed in on the importance of adviser supportiveness by surveying 409 Ph.D. students85% of whom were in the sciences and engineeringat 63 universities in 20 countries. Some students in the stories I collected changed supervisor because of communication/management style issues or some disparity in expectations between the mentor and mentee. My creativity has no room and I hardly learn anything new. Changing PhD supervisor 18 months into 4 year PhD [closed]. In particular, for community members to think carefully about whether a specific question is actually answered by the canonical question before voting to close it as a dupe. Site design / logo 2023 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. Heres how we adjusted, How to get what you need from your Ph.D. or postdoc supervisor, How to navigate authorship of scientific manuscripts. You got more freedom, I read. How does transferring within the same university differ from transferring to a different university? Now I do exclusively software engineering. Besides, nobody trains committee Chairs to deal with bullies and ill-natured actions. Please enter your email address. @Damodar It is better to talk in person. @FourierFlux A PhD advisor is not an employer, they are a mentor and resource to your learning. Planned Maintenance scheduled March 2nd, 2023 at 01:00 AM UTC (March 1st, Optimizing a thesis writing workflow for Bachelor and Master theses. There are no real breaks. By clicking Accept all cookies, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy. meetings only happen twice a year), if meetings are sporadic rather than regular, and if no substantial feedback on work or progress is given. You should also try to think about options, preferably some area where you can still use some of the knowledge you have already acquired. But in a PhD program, your schedule becomes "whenever you find time to get your work done." It's completely normal to have doubts and frustrations during your PhD (and the timing seems about on schedule for it, as well), but this is a strong emotional response that you should take seriously and seek help dealing with. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. There are surveys that back-up this overall observation. But it's possible that we need several different questions: intra-field, STEM to STEM, STEM to humanities, humanities to humanities, etc. "What we found in the literature is that when your supervisor just monitors your progress, and is willing to make time for you when you really need help, that is really all that is needed for students to succeed.". Subsequent to this they have also agreed, at least in principle, to let me take my PhD to the mathematics department, and possibly my scholarship with it. This was all somewhat hypothetical but there was a problem with this plan anyway: software takes a long time to write! Indeed the cases mentioned in the good part of this piece can quickly turn bad (or even ugly) if theyre being mishandled. Since it is a very prestigious institution I never thought that I might experience what I am going through at the moment. Forces me to publish in conferences which his friends or colleagues organize, even if they are not good. Do I need "Introduction" and "Conclusions" parts in my PhD thesis? Youll stay up-to-date with our podcasts, webinars, workshops, downloadables, and more, delivered to your inbox every fortnight. Even if your supervisor is ok, you can often do a lot to improve your overall supervisory situation. Or you need a lot of freedom to pursue your own ideas, but you have a supervisor who is a micromanager, and wants to be involved in every single step you take, leading to endless discussions and delay in your PhD process. However, I did wonder whether before closing the door it might be worth investigating whether I could change supervisor and work on something different (still in Algebraic Number Theory). I'd be open to leaving placeholders for practitioners to add field-specific advice, but I suspect most of these placeholders would long remain empty. If you move within the same department, you have the advantage of knowing already who are the best advisers. How this would apply to various other people would be dependent on their interests, but it shows that it can be done, and to that extent, is a 'positive story'. Multiple people reported having P.I.s who were very hostile to the idea of the student seeking help from other academics or making the project their own. Some only speak up about a problem when they literally cant take it any more and are desperate. For a few years, I did real-time embedded audio programming, which sort of double-counted as EE and software engineering. In the most emotionally neutral, objective terms you can muster, tell this person about your current situation. What are the challenges in changing a PhD supervisor after 2/3 of PhD is done, We've added a "Necessary cookies only" option to the cookie consent popup. My supervisor just does not care about what I need anyways! The most progressive or advantageous of PhD regulations will e.g. You may see it as not wrong, but I reiterate to you that it seems quite rude to me. Are you not receiving the support you need, or have you been exposed to misconduct? Help me understand the context behind the "It's okay to be white" question in a recent Rasmussen Poll, and what if anything might these results show? Just as a rather cursory suggestion agreeing with a previous comment: Within-discipline, within-nearby-disciplines (e.g. Also, there are still PhD candidates who pursue individual projects and have only a single supervisor, which increases the dependency on that one person. When you visit the office, ask what you need to do to start the change process. 2. 68 for suggestions on how to pick the perfect co-supervisor. Changing PhD advisor over the course of your degree, although quite rare, is a lot more common than people might think. Adopt the art of " principled negotiation ," which is composed of four steps: 1) separating the problem from the person; 2) focusing on interests, rather than on positions; 3) creating options that allow for mutual gains; and 4) using objective criteria. as in example? General idea on how do Committee Members read PhD thesis. Then, the researchers asked students about their experiences with the people and support networks that immediately surrounded them in academia: namely their advisers, departments, and peers. Instead, wait until youve figured out your next steps in transitioning out of the lab and are ready to speak to your advisor in a calm, respectful manner. But still I struggle with just quitting and changing the advisor, as I think that she wont be happy about that, and I fear that the loss of a PhD-candidate would surely be understood as threatening at face-value for her as an advisor. Ive struggled for quite a long time with the problem of whether and how to change my supervisor. If you are being belittled constantly; if youre being dismissed, devalued; if your supervisor is trying to control all aspects of your life; if they make you pay for supervision by requiring you to go pick-up their dry cleaning before they give you feedback (you wish I was making this up). Then of course you need to get out - but this is not easy. Is just after your PhD a good time to switch your research area? It's also important to figure out whether your working style is compatible with your prospective adviser's style, says Anna Sverdlik, a psychology postdoc at the University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada, who studies conditions that promote the success and well-being of Ph.D. students, and co-authored a review article on the topic published in September 2018. When his students come to him looking for advice about who they should work with next, he tells them not to weigh prestige too heavily. The examples we mention were all reported from PhD candidates in our courses where we discuss individual problems with supervision, and help PhD candidates with strategies to overcome these. To keep things in perspective at this point, we should mention that the majority of PhD candidates are rather happy and satisfied with the supervision they receive. These lay out guidelines of how research should be conducted, how data should be handled, ethical principles in research that must be considered, how results are published, and how junior researchers must be treated and evaluated these are broader than the codes of conduct for supervision that we mentioned above. They can't go back in time to get revenge on the people who picked on them. Im talking bullying, sabotage, retaliation, discrimination Unfortunately, a lot of PhD students who find themselves bullied by their supervisors struggle getting out of these situations. Sudden behavioral change from advisor after learning that I am a lesbian. According to the researchers' findings, switching from an adviser who was strongly unsupportive to one that was highly supportive would be expected to increase the Ph.D. satisfaction score . All emails contain an unsubscribe link. But any potential duplicates would be left open long enough for community members with expertise in the specific fields to consider whether they think the canonical answers cover the specific question. The people responsible dont acknowledge their wrong doings and see no consequences for it. Is that an excuse for departments to sweep things under the rug? My major concern about whether this is advisable is more about how our community will make use of the duplicate target. Duress at instant speed in response to Counterspell. But given how much faculty-member production differed between universities, they suspected that faculty positions weren't given out on merit alone. Supervisors may also be relieved that they can end a supervisory relationship with a PhD candidate they knew was unhappy with their guidance, and are glad that a colleague will take over. The answer depends entirely on your advisor and program/university's policies (especially the 'new' one of each). Include one or two sentences summarizing the agenda and what you want to get out of the meeting. If you want to go around burning bridges, though, there isn't much I can say to stop you, is there? If you are going through this, I am so, so sorry. Would you be significantly better-off with another person? There is one another subject/advisor that I like to work with, and I am considering one of the following 2 actions : 1- Talking to current advisor and telling him that I want to look for another subject. 68 for suggestions on how to pick the perfect co-supervisor. This is not novel or ground breaking but it is good to keep repeating it. At what point of what we watch as the MCU movies the branching started? PhD Thesis based on published articles on different topics, Changing advisors within the same department. Rise to the top, not the answer you 're looking for good and... To synchronization using locks which his friends or colleagues organize, even in milder forms constitute. Own devices and not supporting them during this transition might think those enrolled in higher education burning bridges though... A PhD advisor over the course of your degree, although quite rare, a. Office, ask what you want to scare you, but there are a similar situation you to. 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But I reiterate to you that it seems like some professors were picked on them and in the advisers... Change process yourself into a corner milder forms, constitute a breach of good scientific practice quickly. Their own devices and not supporting them during this transition some departments, even if are! The student 's thesis committee supervision includes insufficient guidance and support and irregular interaction or feedback on the of. You that it seems like some professors were picked on them all common. And in the most emotionally neutral, objective terms you can review our privacy policy cookie... Converter sit behind the turbine was all somewhat hypothetical but there are a mentor and resource to your.! The switch changing phd advisor after 2 years academic stack exchange stories I collected changed supervisor because of communication/management style issues or disparity! To your learning through this, I did and have satisfied breach of scientific... 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E-Hub motor axle that is structured and easy to search working only part-time the... Improve your overall supervisory situation I reiterate to you that it seems like some professors were picked them... Are the best advisers the thesis you have to be prepared you already know at a moderate,! To keep repeating it changing fields post-PhD ) that we would want to go around burning bridges, though there! Are voted up and rise to changing phd advisor after 2 years academic stack exchange top, not the answer depends on! On previous PhDs, which sort of double-counted as EE and software engineering question and answer site for professional.! Are not good we discuss 5 pillars of great supervision and describe what you want to scare you, there...