One oF MY favorite activities is advising, so I was happy to accept the invitation to give advice about giving advice. Some faculty members give new students a list of their expectations and student rights. One student did so well that I asked him if he knew why. He said I gave him helpful guidance upon entering graduate school, when he was eager to hear it. He then told me what I said, which I’ve been telling to new students ever since:
˲ Show initiative, for fortune favors the bold. Don’t wait for professors to tell you what to do; if we were good managers, we probably wouldn’t be faculty. Explore, challenge assumptions, and don’t let lots of prior art discourage you.
˲ Sink or swim. We’ll offer you what we think are great projects with plenty of potential, and we’ll support you the best we can, but it’s what you do with the opportunity that makes or breaks your graduate student career.
˲ Educate your professor. We’re in a fast-moving field, so for us to give you good advice we need to know what you’re working on. Teach us!
taste; in particular, how to identify problems that if solved are more likely to scale and have impact.
˲ Frequent feedback. Offer opportunities for students to practice communication skills by presenting to outsiders, to improve their research via honest feedback, to inspire them with earned praise, and to set milestones for their research.
˲ Foster camaraderie and enthusiasm. Create a community that provides camaraderie, group learning, mentoring from senior students, and learning from peers to make the whole Ph.D. process more enjoyable.
Meeting these goals is not always easy. I’ll describe three techniques
that have worked well for me and many Berkeley systems students: team-ori-ented, multidisciplinary projects; research retreats; and open, collaborative research labs.
Exciting multidisciplinary projects. I try to work with colleagues to create exciting, five-year projects that I would die to work on if I were a graduate student again. We self-assem-ble into teams of typically two to four faculty members with the right areas of expertise to tackle a challenging and important problem, then recruit 10 to 20 graduate students to work toward building a prototype that demonstrates our proposed solution. The accompanying table shows
Advising is simpler if you foster an environment that helps students learn how to become successful researchers. The general goals of the environment should be:
˲ Acquiring research taste. Provide ways for students to acquire research
network of Workstations (no W) group reunion in 2008.
PhotograPh By eric anderson
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