tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post8031574011310486264..comments2024-03-25T02:33:41.590-05:00Comments on FemaleScienceProfessor: First & Foremost?Female Science Professorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15288567883197987690noreply@blogger.comBlogger63125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-41809953949891916782010-09-06T11:31:47.949-05:002010-09-06T11:31:47.949-05:00Does anyone know of any blogs by First Students? I...Does anyone know of any blogs by First Students? I am thinking of starting one. My experience has been very challenging.First Studentnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-90432957058316680252009-11-10T08:45:10.284-06:002009-11-10T08:45:10.284-06:00One advantage is that your advisor's success i...One advantage is that your advisor's success is intimately tied to your success as the first graduate student of a new asst prof. So they are likely to be more involved and interested in your project than say someone with a lab of 30. There failure of one person in nothing to the advisor. However, they may be a little too involved at times or a little too micromanagement oriented. (I know I was!)MEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14859894739424620477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-19855289946160674592009-11-10T01:00:34.592-06:002009-11-10T01:00:34.592-06:00As a new FSP, I very much appreciate your comments...As a new FSP, I very much appreciate your comments on new students. I don't have any yet, but am actively searching!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-1424782042988273262009-11-09T12:53:27.534-06:002009-11-09T12:53:27.534-06:00Another possibility is being the first student of ...Another possibility is being the first student of an established researcher. My advisor spent a decade at a research lab before coming to a university. He's still a research scientist (not faculty), but he can have students. My experience has been phenomenal!! A few reasons...<br />- he is great at grant writing and paper publishing because he's worked on research scientist mode for so long<br />- he's not distracted by classes/TAs<br />- because I'm his first, I think he is more engaged in my success<br />- he's very well-established and respected in the field<br /><br />When it comes to advisors, though, I think the most important part is the person, not their "data points".Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-1610820223610000602009-11-09T08:27:33.957-06:002009-11-09T08:27:33.957-06:00Seems to me the most important thing to avoid is t...Seems to me the most important thing to avoid is the "pyramid-style" of advising most often associated with extremely senior/"productive" Primary Investigators. That is, where the PI is essentially MIA and you are advised 99% of the time by one of many postdocs or senior grad students. <br /><br />The main downside is that you will for practical purposes have an even more inexperienced person as an adviser (the postdoc), AND they don't have as much interest in you succeeding as a young faculty adviser would. <br /><br />Another downside is that you will usually have to publish your papers with at least 5 co-authors - if you are the first trainee you have a much better chance of having being the first of only a few authors (ideally you and your adviser; more often you, a collaborator or two, and your adviser). And until you're THE senior grad student, you'll be middlest author on these publications.<br /><br />However, this situation isn't the case for ALL senior PI's, and some fairly junior PI's already have monster labs by their 3rd or 4th year.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-38284545193995610912009-11-08T19:54:38.700-06:002009-11-08T19:54:38.700-06:00new advisors often are clueless and don't have...<i>new advisors often are clueless and don't have their sh!t together and make a lot of mistakes in terms of funding, project management and lab management and also their own time management.</i><br /><br />Maybe you are at a place where funding is too tight? around here any half-decent new professor has enough startup funds that you don't have to worry about that. A grant soon follows. Moreover we have a vetting process for new profs and only allow them to supervise if they seem to have settled down already (usually within two years of joining).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-57399451521675071742009-11-08T19:36:18.347-06:002009-11-08T19:36:18.347-06:00Everyone I knew who was a student or postdoc of a ...Everyone I knew who was a student or postdoc of a new advisor, had a bad experience. My own advisor was established and I am thankful for that after seeing what the students of new professors had to go through. New advisors often are clueless and don't have their sh!t together and make a lot of mistakes in terms of funding, project management and lab management and also their own time management. Yes they did tend to have more creativity and energy than old professors but hey the grad studetns and postdocs themselves are also young and creative and full of energy so it's not that necessary for the advisor to have those qualities I think it's more important for the advisor to be a good and stable provider of resources so that the students can reach their potential without having to suffer from the new advisor's costly mistakes.<br /><br />my advice to students would be to try for the well-established professors with good track records first. If you can't get a position with such an advisor, then and only then go with a new advisor. The exception would be if the new advisor is very obviously a superstar - already has lots of recognition and funding.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-30720052318467307392009-11-08T18:45:06.817-06:002009-11-08T18:45:06.817-06:00I was one of the first PhD students for my Adviser...I was one of the first PhD students for my Adviser. The advantages are great energy and productivity. It was a win-win situation to produce more papers for his tenure and my graduation. <br /><br />I was lucky to have two senior professors in the faculty in the same field. They were just great with advise about nuts and bolts or long-term view. <br /><br />The disadvantages were that I wasn't "allowed" to network at all. I don't know if it is the case of my Adviser building his own network or being jealous of letting out the new ideas. Also, I had to do twice as much to graduate. (I wrote 5 first-author journal papers while others in dept. graduated with 1 or 2).<br /><br />Also, the personality thing was a risk. His early students (me and another one) suffered for his frustrations with managing his teaching load/defending our work/being aware of admin side of things.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-7881710043074278802009-11-08T10:39:28.451-06:002009-11-08T10:39:28.451-06:00I am talking about 25 years ago, so things have ch...I am talking about 25 years ago, so things have changed, but... there is a definite advantage, in my view, to grad students pairing up with junior professors under the right conditions. This was my case as I was the first Masters student of a young and ambitious advisor who is now recognized as being on top of his field in one of the top 5 research institions in the world. He was not known then, but I enjoyed his energy, hard work, and professionalism (he was behaving as if he had been in the business forever..). I learned from him to think outside the box, to question the established, and to seek collaboration with experts worldwide. For my PhD, I landed in the group of a very well known professor with whom I spent very little time. But the meager interaction I had with him (perhaps once a year) taught me the principles by which I built my own career. This is what an experienced advisor will do to you: let you grow independent, yet offer excellent advice and insight at critical points in your grad career. <br /><br />Before I knew it, I was on the other side of the fence, but the fence did not really exist for me at that time. I was offered an assistant professor position and was rapidly inundated by advising responsibilities. Students did not flock to me: I was almost totally unknown in the U.S. and had published only a couple of papers, the others from my PhD were still in press. But students came to this department because it was (still is) an excellent department in which to be a grad student, AND there was a new assistant professor as a bonus. I had the benefit of a senior faculty in a closely related field, so in my tenure years, I ended up advising or co-advising half a dozen students. <br /><br />So, from my various experiences, I would say that grad students in any case have to pay attention not just to the individual advisor, but to the graduate program they consider joining. Without belittling the role of the individual advisor, I certainly tell prospective students that what is most important is the strength and variety of the graduate program they will pick. In a strong graduate program, do not hesitate to choose a rooky as an advisor. There will be many senior professors to help advise or mentor, your advisor will be very present and interactive, and you will learn mainly from your peers anyway. What you don't want to do, whether you end up being advised by a junior or a senior professor, is to find yourself isolated and limited by the size and/or quality of the overall research program. This is the most important decision you will make in your career, and it's OK, even recommended, to take risks and choose a very junior advisor if the boundary conditions are right.franglaisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-67591520502761499432009-11-08T07:49:35.267-06:002009-11-08T07:49:35.267-06:00I agree with John V, moving advisors are a real pr...I agree with John V, moving advisors are a real problem. Having a new advisor can be very good but it also involves a higher risk. If you can't check the advisors track record, check how the department has dealed with advisor problems before, and get a good co-advisor who you could switch to if necessary. In my country PhD-students always have the right to switch advisor.another anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-11602319400066884582009-11-07T19:31:03.617-06:002009-11-07T19:31:03.617-06:00As the first student of my adviser, I agree with m...As the first student of my adviser, I agree with most of the benefits that people have already mentioned. Financially, if the startup package is good and the adviser is good at getting early-career grants, a new group can be more secure than an established but over-stretched one. And in my PhD program, I will probably graduate before the issue of tenure comes up. I agree with others that it's important to have well-established committee members (or the equivalent) for later on. And I definitely intend to postdoc in an established lab.<br /><br />For me the major disadvantage has been the lack of experienced people working around me. In my field, it's certainly very difficult for new professors to attract good postdocs. While my adviser is obviously a great resource she's very busy and I can't bother her all the time with trivial questions. If I hadn't come to grad school with several years of research experience in this field I think it would be very difficult to progress.<br /><br />So far the research has been the best part--it's very exciting to work on completely new ideas and start a project/lab from the ground up. Unfortunately I think seeing so much of the whole process of starting a lab/being an assistant professor has probably discouraged me from going into academia. (Perhaps professors are like sausages; it's better not to see how they're made.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-61319626526643636492009-11-07T17:18:35.421-06:002009-11-07T17:18:35.421-06:00"Very interesting, so writing in the advisor&..."Very interesting, so writing in the advisor's office is now cheating?? "<br /><br />No, writing in the advisor's office per se is not what I considered cheating (I'm the one who wrote post you are referring to). it's because the professor said that he/she would not go to the same lengths for the students once tenure is no longer at stake, which is the cheating part. If you would willingly spend 2 hours per day with all of your students and let them all use your office, that's fine. But that's not the case here since that professor has openly said that he/she would not do the same for other students, and the students won't have it so good anymore after he/she gets tenure. this is basically a double-standard - which students get over-and-above help or "nurturing" and which don't, based on when it benefits the advisor. <br /><br />And what about the student who - without the advisor's intervention - would not have worked 2 hours per day due to a medical (psychological) problem? I'm sorry but not being able to work two hours per day unless your advisor is literally forcing you, is close to being dysfunctional and unfit for a job. This student needs professional help! (what is wrong with seeking professional help?? A professor is a thesis advisor not a trained psychiatrist!!) Or a vacation, leave of absence, whatever it takes to get him healthy enough that working two hours a day is not an extraordinary effort. Is it doing them any favors to pass them onto the next stage even when they are presently still unfit? Isn't it setting up the student to suffer even more in the future since they are not actually ready?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-85026752943662066762009-11-07T13:49:39.884-06:002009-11-07T13:49:39.884-06:00Very interesting, so writing in the advisor's ...Very interesting, so writing in the advisor's office is now cheating?? I don't see how. As advisors, we are teachers, actors, writers and yes, psychologists. Students have many crying sessions behind the doors of our offices. I consider this part of the nurturing, part of the job and some call it cheating and tell us to just send a suffering student to get medical help and get out of our face with their psychological problems. I couldn't disagree more.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-78316985280127206382009-11-07T13:31:28.519-06:002009-11-07T13:31:28.519-06:00"Much more common is young faculty leaving to..."<i>Much more common is young faculty leaving to move to a better job, stranding grad students in mid-thesis or dragging them around the country. No way to avoid this risk unless the faculty member is already at the top place (and not even then).</i>"<br /><br />I'm at probably the best department in my field, but we lost a junior faculty member a few years ago to industry (she wanted to live with her partner in another city and have only 40-hour weeks).<br /><br />I ended up inheriting two of her students, because I was the closest subject match of the faculty. While I might not have picked either student for my lab and neither one might have picked me as an adviser, they both have finished decent theses and gotten postdocs in top-tier labs. As a training experience, I think the transfer worked very well. <br /><br />Unfortunately, neither was doing work that was directly useful to me (though close enough to my grant that I did not feel guilty about using grant funds to pay them). As a result, my research went slower than it might have if I'd had students working on the problems I was interested in. This may be contributing to my difficulty in getting the funding renewed or in getting new funding. The students who are suffering are the ones currently in my lab, for whom I have no funding---they have been TAing and spending a lot of time writing grant proposals to try to fund their research. (If they get the funding, it will be see as great training experience. In the more likely case that we fail to get funding, I'm worried about massive depression and burnout---theirs and mine.)Kevinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14528751349030084532noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-53581485930315546312009-11-07T10:51:57.107-06:002009-11-07T10:51:57.107-06:00Lots of good comments already, just a couple more ...Lots of good comments already, just a couple more thoughts.<br /><br />While dread of junior faculty being denied tenure is a problem, most faculty get tenure, so the problem is more the pressure than the denial. Much more common is young faculty leaving to move to a better job, stranding grad students in mid-thesis or dragging them around the country. No way to avoid this risk unless the faculty member is already at the top place (and not even then).<br /><br />For top students, it is clearly best to join an active group. Better still, an active group in a department full of active groups. This diversifies the risks - most problems can be worked around.<br /><br />Being a first student of a particular faculty member is a huge risk. Being a first student in a department where there are only limited options to change advisors is foolhardy.<br /><br />I liked working across groups - why not mine the expertise more widely than can be done with just one group? This also dilutes the influence of any one advisor.<br /><br />As an astute reader probably infers, my problem is lack of focus rather than lack of options, which is why I'm writing this rather than churning through Matlab as I should be.John Vidalehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09871768524749705799noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-78724133161563751182009-11-07T09:59:19.250-06:002009-11-07T09:59:19.250-06:00I'm one of the first advisees for my advisor, ...I'm one of the first advisees for my advisor, and I love it! I have had enough advisors before to recognize a good one, so I actually left a very experienced advisor to work for an inexperienced one. I get a lot of attention and also the chance to see what it's like to set up a lab in my field.OverEngineeredhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04689576002222738341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-67474154013609633042009-11-07T09:46:42.808-06:002009-11-07T09:46:42.808-06:00I wrote a post about this same subject (from the p...I wrote a post about this same subject (from the point of view of the student) a few months back: http://interdisciplinaryintrospective.blogspot.com/2009/08/on-working-for-new-professors.html <br /><br />I think an advisee's experience with a new professor really depends on the personality of the professor. FemalePhysioProf made the blanket statement that "Being the first student means that you will learn techniques from the advisor directly. If you are the kind of person who learns by watching and doing (as opposed to reading and studying), this is an opportunity not to be missed." Unfortunately, this was not my experience working with a new advisor. Although he did teach me a few techniques, he's not a particularly good instructor, and in most cases he merely introduced me to the concepts and set me to work to figure it out on my own. So, beware of generalizations; every prof. will be different.<br /><br />I'm also surprised by the number of people commenting that new profs have more time to devote to their students than tenured profs. My experience has again been very different. Between teaching classes (one class) for the first time, frantically writing grant proposals, and starting a family, I had to fight for even an hour of my advisor's time each week. I don't mean to paint a horrible picture of my advisor. I actually think we've worked well together, but, I just want to point out again that every experience is different.Grading Voyagerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16334791440913287150noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-19839303784310033392009-11-07T06:49:18.648-06:002009-11-07T06:49:18.648-06:00I thought I should mention this, I am currently on...I thought I should mention this, I am currently on 3x 10 weeks rotations and I am seriously short on time. I'm interdisciplinary between 2 departments and so everything is planned 1 to 2 weeks in advance as I need to coordinate between the work carried out in both my labs. However, even though it is still uncertain whether I will stay in these two labs I already had sabotage by current students and advisor issues...2 equal weight advisors showing dominance over my project, not fun when they are both men and I'm female...so, 10 weeks is not as long as what some people think. Though I will admit that it is long enough to have obtained some sort of result and get to know your potential supervisor(s) a lot better. <br /><br />Regardless of all the hard work, I do recommend future students to do this as you can try out different labs and advisors as well as the lab environment, which is sometimes more important than the advisors themselves. Of course, the advisors can choose you too, so you need to work harder than you would normally. <br /><br />I do, however, wonder what advisors' views on this project rotations are though. I know that some find it irritating to have advisees for the short term but what are the general impression?hkukbilingualidiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09347011556987578563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-74692127820673858562009-11-07T06:08:40.706-06:002009-11-07T06:08:40.706-06:00I was my professor's first student! And she (y...I was my professor's first student! And she (yes SHE!) proved a great advisor ...though she had tenure by the time I came. My advisor gave me a lot of freedom to do my thing and cared about me getting a job... there were some people who told me... "she's unproven...not a good idea" but I persisted. Eventually, I dareay that my advisor was the only thing I liked about graduate school.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-12850025457416091372009-11-07T03:24:23.043-06:002009-11-07T03:24:23.043-06:00"However, when I included exams into the expr..."However, when I included exams into the expression "I almost wrote everything", I was actually referring to something else I did in the exam stage, which I think tremendously contributed to the student passing the exam faster. I did that because the student was too stressed to work and I am sorry, I am not sure I'll do it for all students, I can't promise that. "<br /><br />Something is very wrong here. You basically helped your student to cheat because it would benefit you. If a student cannot perform due to psychological problems (which is no fault of their own) then they need to get professional medical help so that they can become functional enough to do the job on their own in an honest way, not for their advisor to make exceptions only when it would benefit him/herself. You have now set a precedent that is going to be very difficult to go backwards on, with future students.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-33810527235732511352009-11-07T02:59:17.804-06:002009-11-07T02:59:17.804-06:00You need those big heavy-weight people to actually...<i>You need those big heavy-weight people to actually land some real position. So if you want to be in academia after your post-doc, choose someone who has track recording of launching people.<br /></i><br />Bullshit. Some of the most attractive tenure-track faculty candidates are those who come from non-heavyweight labs, but still manage to publish high-impact work in top journals.Comrade PhysioProfhttp://physioprof.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-83177389111178055142009-11-06T20:01:43.575-06:002009-11-06T20:01:43.575-06:00I certainly didn't write the exams! However, w...I certainly didn't write the exams! However, when I included exams into the expression "I almost wrote everything", I was actually referring to something else I did in the exam stage, which I think tremendously contributed to the student passing the exam faster. I did that because the student was too stressed to work and I am sorry, I am not sure I'll do it for all students, I can't promise that. What I did, I had two hour/day sessions during which the student wrote the document IN MY OFFICE with no intervention from me whatsoever, but in my presence, because they couldn't focus on their work due to psychological problems. Having me in the room and breathing in the back of their head forced them to actually fully work for 2h/day. I don't know anybody that did that so I said "I wrote" bc/ I think that was a major push and I can be identified by this info:) And one knows is dangereous to write on blogs before tenure, so yet another requirement: don't run your mouth on blogs. I guess I should stop doing it:)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-84311995740513364912009-11-06T19:52:39.527-06:002009-11-06T19:52:39.527-06:00wowzers. maybe i'm not as dreadful of a grad s...wowzers. maybe i'm not as dreadful of a grad student as i thought.Rachelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08974119137861459963noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-19919532210572102472009-11-06T19:47:35.633-06:002009-11-06T19:47:35.633-06:00I wouldn't write an exam for a student, but I ...I wouldn't write an exam for a student, but I would do (and have done) the type of 'major editing' described by Anon. If a student has spent years doing a research project (having ideas, getting data) but doesn't write well and is about to be out of funding (and, in many cases -- but not all -- is a non-native English speaker), in those cases I am going to intervene.Female Science Professorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15288567883197987690noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-20732511030901532622009-11-06T19:20:15.860-06:002009-11-06T19:20:15.860-06:00I am the Anon. that supposedly doesn't care ab...I am the Anon. that supposedly doesn't care about students' skills, I was sure my post was outrageous:). It's not actually as bad as it sounded :) , I was a little frustrated reading the student's thesis when I wrote the previous post. The student is indeed very good in the lab, I made sure they have very good experimental skills, but they're not at the same level in the writing part and part of it it's that they are from Asia. The student passed the exams on their own with no problems. I may have exagerated that "I wrote" the documents for them, I didn't exactly "write" them, I just sped up the process by editing paragraphs directly and summarizing my comments and suggestions for improvment in a commentary, instead of going through 7 versions of the same document, which actually was a little frustrating. In the future, I intend to go through 7 versions though, starting with the second student. So I repent:) I do care about getting tenure though, especially in this economy [:D]<br /><br />But let's discuss this a little further. May I suggest, maybe we shouldn't put "graduating a Ph.D." as a "requirement" for tenure if we want only perfect Ph.D.s with awesome experimental, presentation and writing skills. My student would have graduated anyway, only a bit later because they would have had to write 7 versions of the same documents. Ah, and another consequence would have been that I wouldn't have had as many papers either if this student had to write them all. What do you suggest a young faculty does if they don't get that wonderful student, because the wonderfullest awesomest students go to experienced, wise, well published, well funded PIs? But they are "required" to graduate a Ph.D.? Let's say they start their career with one Masters and one Ph.D. student. I am telling you, the Ph.D. student MUST graduate in five years and you have to make that happen no matter what the blogosphere says about it. If the students are dumb to start with and cannot graduate, I am not sure how the adviser is expected to transform them into geniuses and why it is considered to be their fault if the student, let's say fails exams? Don't you think this requirement shouldn't be so important because it is not so much up to the advisor whether the first student is any good? Going further, another consequence of this would be let's eliminate numbers of publications as requirements for tenure if the students must all write the articles. I haven't met many advisers who don't write the articles themselves actually. Very few grad students are good enough to do it and I didn't find one yet. My conclusion is, there is not only black and white but also different shades of grey in this picture and one thing triggers another. Well, I guess is better to work for an established professor afterall.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com