No tWo DoCtoRal students are the same, and the things an advisor needs to do for each vary accordingly. I can look back over my career and see several approaches that work, and one approach that is popular but doesn’t really serve the student well. To begin, the goal of the advisor is to teach someone how to become an independent thinker, inventor, and problem-solver. You must take someone barely out of their teenage years and convince
them that they can do something that none of the most experienced people in the field have been able to do. And they must do that not only once, but throughout their professional lifetime. Frankly, when I went off to study for my doctorate, I had no idea what writing a thesis entailed; had I known, I never would have gone to graduate school.
What not to Do I was a student, and later faculty member, in an electrical engineering de-
partment, where the widely held opinion was that the way you wrote a thesis was to read many papers. Look at the last section, where there were always some “open problems.” Pick one, and work on it, until you are able to make a little progress. Then write a paper of your own about your progress, and don’t forget to include an “open problems” section, where you put in everything you were unable to do.
Unfortunately this approach, still widely practiced today, encourages
students and colleagues attend Jeff ullman’s retirement celebration in 2003.
PhotograPh By hector garcia-molina
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