Supervising Grad Students – Emily Read, PhD, RN

Graduate Student Supervision: Fostering an empowering work environment in your lab/research group

Today we’re going to discuss how to foster an empowering work environment in your lab/research group. Over the last year, the “great resignation” has highlighted the importance of work environments on employee satisfaction, commitment, and turnover. People are done tolerating jobs (and people) that make them unhappy – and that includes higher education. We (the university/academy) can and need to do better.

As a graduate student supervisor, you play a major role in creating the work environment and culture for your graduate students and research personnel/team. How intentional have you been in creating that work environment? What supports and structures have you put in place to empower your team? Where do you even start?

Well, let’s start with Kanter’s (1993) theory of structural empowerment. Structural empowerment is all about providing people (usually employees but in this case graduate students) with access to the support, resources, information, and opportunities to learn and grow that they need to have in order to be able to actually do their work. There is a ton of research evidence showing that structural empowerment has positive impacts on employee and organizational outcomes. In addition, support has been identified as a key determinant of graduate student satisfaction.

It is also the case that when people don’t have access to these key empowerment structures it can make it really challenging – and frustrating – to accomplish their work. It’s pretty obvious that not having the information, resources, support, and opportunities you need to get the job done makes life difficult!

So when it comes to empowering your graduate students, how exactly do you do that?

Support

This might be both the easiest and most challenging source of empowerment to provide to your students because it doesn’t cost you money but it can cost you time, which is one of your most precious and scarce resources. However, you do not need to be/should not be the only source of support for your graduate students. Support can come from peers, committee members, and the university as well.

Resources

Providing graduate students with resources is all about making sure that they have what they need to successfully complete their degree. This could be financial support, time, access to equipment and/or software or access to space, among other things. This is one reason why getting research grants is so important – it gives you resources to share with your students.

Information

This is such an important aspect of empowerment for graduate students. It obviously includes access to the university library and research articles or databases, but there is also a whole heck of a lot of information (intellectual capital) in that brain of yours that you can share with your students ranging from content expertise, research methods, who’s who, and how to get things done as a researcher.

Opportunities to learn and grow

Each one of your students is going to be unique in terms of their strengths and learning needs. Discussing learning goals each semester can help you identify opportunities of value and interest to each of your students. For example, you may have a fresh master’s student who has never written a conference abstract and a more experienced grad student with lots of experience doing this – why not pair them together? The less experienced student will benefit from the mentorship and experience of the more experienced student and the more experienced student will have an opportunity to mentor and teach. (Of course, you should still provide some guidance and feedback to both students).

Other examples of providing opportunities include sharing information about key conferences and encouraging/requiring students to submit abstracts, providing opportunities to contribute to research projects, presentations, and projects that you are working on, providing hands-on training that advance your students’ skills and knowledge relevant to your field, and introducing your students to people within your professional network, to name a few.

Conclusion

So there you have it – you now know what structural empowerment is and have some ideas about how you can provide it for your graduate students 🙂

Until next week!

How to help struggling graduate students finish their thesis

While it would be great if all of our grad students could finish within the “regular” timeframe, it is completely normal to have some students who take longer. The pandemic has had a huge impact on many students’ personal and professional lives and I think we need to approach this with compassion while also helping these students move forward.

Students who are struggling may need to take a leave from the program to deal with other things that are happening in their life. In my experience, students rarely want to do this, even if you have a heart to heart with them and reassure them that you and their thesis will still be there when they get back, Ultimately, taking a leave (or not) is their decision so your role is to make sure it is an informed one and that they know it is an option.

Setting and maintaining appropriate boundaries with students is also very important. As a professor who is also a nurse, I am perhaps hyper aware of these boundaries and making sure that students have access to the supports they need. I am not their nurse or mental health counselor, but I do care about them and have direct conversations to make sure that they know about the academic and mental health services they have access to on campus and in the community. If they are also working (many of mine are) they often also have access to an Employee Assistance Program. As their thesis supervisor you can provide them with information about resources available to them and keep your role focused on the task at hand: finishing their thesis as soon as possible.

So how do you actually help them finish their thesis?

1. Provide them with a thesis completion roadmap.

Sometimes the steps required to finish are not entirely clear to students (or faculty!). Create a 1-pager that shows all the steps involved in completing a thesis in your faculty/department. Then you can print it out for the student and show them where they are now and what they have left to do to get to the finish line. This map can be a helpful tool for planning and for breaking up the steps left to complete

2. Help them establish a daily writing habit.

Some students love doing research but hate writing. They need to get over this aversion real fast if they want to finish their thesis and have an academic career.

Mindset is a huge part of this! Ask your student to brainstorm ways that they can reward themselves for writing and make it something that they look forward to. For me, writing is one of the only times that I get to be alone and think. As an introvert, I love that! Rewards could be things like having a good coffee during writing time, freedom from doing anything else (like answering emails, etc.), or even putting a sticker on a tracking chart, with a bigger reward after so many stickers. Of course, the biggest reward is finishing their thesis which is a huge freaking deal and graduating with their degree!

In addition to working on liking writing (or at least appreciating it as a means to an end), a daily writing habit needs to be scheduled in their calendar. Your student needs to schedule blocks of time every single day to work on writing their thesis. These need to be treated like appointments that they cannot miss! Then they need to show up and do the work.

3. Encourage them to let go of “perfection”.

This can be a doozy! Some students are reluctant to send you what they have done because they are worried it isn’t good enough yet. They want it to be absolutely “perfect” before you see it. Honest to goodness, perfection is a lie! I have yet to see a thesis submitted where the committee did not have suggestions or minor revisions for the student before they were completely done. Getting feedback is a key part of the process and the sooner you can get a draft from your student, the sooner they can get your input. Your expertise and guidance will help make sure they are on the right track.

One of the reasons I was able to finish my PhD under 4 years is that I knew my committee would have feedback no matter what I sent to them! There was no point in me spending an extra week or two on a part of my proposal or thesis to make it “perfect” when it could be in my committee’s hands instead and I could move on to working on the next chapter while I waited. This being said, I am a strong writer and did not send them unorganized garbage to fix. I’m definitely not encouraging that! If their writing skills are absolutely horrible that is another issue entirely.

4. Put the ball in their court.

While you may feel personally responsible for them finishing their thesis (on time or otherwise), ultimately, it is up to them to do the work to finish it and earn their degree. You can and should support them to do this but you cannot do it for them. Grad school isn’t for everyone and achieving this degree is a big deal!

I know the pandemic has been a tough go for a lot of us and some of our students. I hope that the strategies and ideas I shared in this post are useful to you in helping your graduate students move forward with compassion and an actionable plan to get their darn thesis done!

See you next Sunday! Emily

Non-cash ways to support your grad students

Before we get into this post, I want to highlight the importance of funding your graduate students if you can and as best you can! However, there are times when you may not have a lot of funding or enough to go around OR you just can’t pay your students enough to work for you. The latter happens in nursing most of the time – nursing grad students simply make more working as an RN than I could possibly afford to pay them as a research assistant.

Regardless of your cash flow situation, there are important benefits that you can (and should) provide to your graduate students aside from/over and above direct financial support.

Social capital.

Social capital refers to the resources embedded within and available from our relationships with other people (see my PhD dissertation for more info + references if you would like). Your grad students benefit tremendously from your professional network so make sure that you include them in projects, introduce them to your colleagues, and provide them with exposure to your network at conferences and other events.

Research training & mentorship.

The time and energy you invest in teaching and mentoring your grad students is incredibly valuable. Make sure that you have regular, dedicated time for each of your graduate students and that you provide them with the training they need to develop/enhance their knowledge and skills and be successful.

Experience.

A major part of the grad student journey is gaining experience – both in doing research and sharing it with others. Supporting students to submit abstracts, prepare presentations, and attend conferences can be a major benefit of working with you. Be strategic and pick national/international conferences that are happening close to you (or virtually) to limit the costs of attending – and cover registration if you can. Bonus points if you have a group of students attending together! Pre-covid I was able to support a group of students to go to a conference in Montreal and then to Halifax the following year. They really enjoyed having some social support at the event and it was something that we all looked forward to as a group. Highly recommended!

CV points.

Not to be overlooked, being able to add things to your CV is also important, particularly if you are pursuing an academic career. Your grad students should be given credit for their contributions to research publications and presentations. Unfortunately this doesn’t always happen. One time I wrote an entire article and was gifted 4th author… another time I was a co-author on a paper with another grad student and her supervisor took all the credit! I could write a whole article just about this topic but the bottom line in my opinion is that credit should be given as earned, and only as earned. Having direct up-front conversations with grad students (and everyone involved) about authorship expectations and opportunities is super important.

So there you have it! There are lots of ways that you can support your grad students without giving them cold hard cash (though, if you can do that too, high five!).

Until next time!

Emily

Dealing with RA/Grad student turnover

Research on job turnover typically focuses on how to prevent it. However, turnover of graduate students and research assistants (RAs) is a feature (not a bug) and is somewhat predictable (especially with graduate students). In fact, turnover might not even be the right term to use; perhaps it should be the RA/grad student cycle instead. There are (or will be), of course, subgroups within your research team which have different cycles and timelines: master’s students (2 years), PhD students (4 years), post-docs (1-2 years), research staff (contract/grant-based time frames), and out of sequence/taking longer than expected graduate students.

As a research supervisor, recruiting and training research trainees is an important part of your role but it is also one that can be onerous and time-consuming if you don’t have a plan. In this post I am going to share three key decisions that will help you attract the right people to your research team and make it easier to provide them with a rich and meaningful training experience.

Key Decision #1: Focus your Research

First, you need to decide what your program of research is going to be about. As a naturally curious person interested in learning and discovering new things, this may be difficult for you! I know personally that I had a really hard time with this after I started my tenure-track position. I was invited to work on a lot of different research projects that were super interesting but not necessarily in alignment with my own main area of research. At first I said yes to everything until I realized that saying yes to these opportunities meant saying no to other projects that were more in line with my research priorities/expertise. It also takes way more time and effort to supervise a student working on a project that is not within your direct area of expertise.

The fact is that clearly stating what your program of research IS about also defines what it is NOT about. That means that you will say no to grants, collaborations, and even students who do not align with your research program. Sounds harsh but it will ultimately help you produce high-quality, impactful research in your field and a mentorship experience that truly serves your research trainees.

Key Decision #2: Build your Research Team

Building a research team is a lot like building a varsity sports team – it takes time and as your reputation and research success grows you will find it easier to attract the best students and get research funding.

Before you start building your roster, decide who your ideal graduate student and research staff member is. You need to know this so you can assess the fit of potential students and research team members. This will be partially determined by the type of research you do, the types of programs offered by your faculty/department, your research training model (see below), and your research grants. Some people are not going to be a good fit for you and, lovely as they may be, you should encourage them to work with someone who is going to be.

You also need to be prepared to commit the time and energy each person you bring onto your team requires. Working with grad students is different from hiring an employee who already knows how to do everything you want them to do. Grad students are there to learn from you! Yes, they contribute and add value but you are also investing in them and helping them develop skills and expertise. A research coordinator on the other hand might be hired full time to take the lead on a specific project for a defined period and you might want to have them continue on for your next one.

Key Decision #3: Your research training model

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. One approach I have seen/experienced to maximizing research productivity is to create a sort of research pyramid whereby post docs or senior PhD students are responsible for training those behind them. If done intentionally this can be a valuable opportunity for developing leadership and teaching skills, but often it is done on the fly and can leave students feeling unsupported, undervalued, or resentful of being asked to do work they think their supervisor should be doing. Would you rather create a research training experience where all of your trainees and research staff get to learn from and work with you directly? What is your research training model? What would you like it to be? You may find it helpful to reflect on your experiences as a student and think about what you loved and what could have been better. How can you make the experience awesome for the people working with you?

So there you have it – 3 key decisions that will help you attract the right people to your research program and provide them with an awesome research training experience. Remember, you will need to be patient but if you focus on building a quality program you will attract quality people and success will follow.