Advising Philosophy

Choosing your advisor is possibly the most important decision you will make in graduate school. In case you are considering choosing me (Devin) as your advisor, here are some notes about my expectations and advising philosophy.

Expectations. I assume that the goal of each of my students is to become a world-class scientist. This is a reachable goal for anyone who has been admitted to the program. Hard work and a positive attitude are more important than a strong background or natural talent.

Role of advisor. I consider my students friends and colleagues. To the extent possible, I expect my students to choose their own approaches to research problems. I may suggest avenues, tasks, or goals, but ultimately it is the student doing the research who must make the decisions. In the first year, I will make detailed suggestions, but by the time a student starts writing a thesis, I expect him or her to be fully independent.

Time commitment. I expect the time commitment to be 40-50 hours of efficient work per week. The first term of graduate school can be difficult to adjust to, so the expectation is that about 10-15 hours per week will be spent on research work during this time. For the remainder of the first year, about half of the available time should be devoted to research, with the remaining half devoted to classwork. From the second year, students are expected to be doing full-time research. I expect a Ph.D to take slightly less than six years, and a M.S. to take slightly less than two years, although individual progress may be slower or faster.

Setting goals. Set goals you can reasonably reach. Research is almost always harder than we think. You should set goals for the term, and also spend about fifteen minutes writing goals for each upcoming week.

Measuring progress. Research progress can be hard to measure, at least locally. A useful metric is how many pages you write each week in your notebook. For a grad student doing full-time research, a good target is 4 pages of figures, equations, data, and brainstormed ideas per day. That's 1000 pages each year, 1500 pages for a M.S. (half-time first year), or 5000 pages for a Ph.D. (half-time two years, total of six years). I'm very serious about this; most of my evaluation of how well you are doing will be based on this metric. Quality matters too, but I will assume you are doing your best!

Advisor meetings. During your first year, we'll meet three hours per week, broken up into two meetings. You may feel that there's not enough time between meetings to get any work done. However, remember that these meetings should not be regarded as meetings with your supervisor, but with a collaborator. They are a great time to get some research done, and two people are often smarter than one! As you become more comfortable with the research process, we'll meet less and less. From the second year onwards, we'll probably only meet one hour per week, unless we are working particularly closely on a problem.

Lab meetings. There will be a two-hour lab meeting each week. This is your chance to find out what others are doing, and talk about what you're doing. You should expect to give a formal one-hour talk to your labmates every few months.

Classes. Classes are much less important than research. It is very tempting to spend all of your time on a class rather than research, because the goals are so much clearer, and there's a great feeling of accomplishment in completing a difficult assignment. However, graduate school is your chance to become a producer of knowledge, not a consumer. There's a reason that the classes are pass/fail.