You should also try to think about options, preferably some area where you can still use some of the knowledge you have already acquired. Much as you may want to yell your decision over the rooftops, announcing that youre leaving while in a heated argument with your advisor isnt going to make your transition any easier. As just one example: A supervisor of one of the PhD participants in our courses published an article with data from the PhD candidates research without that persons knowledge or consent. Also Helfer et al. Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products. "Students have to find someone who goes beyond their own interest," he says. By clicking Accept all cookies, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy. If youre interested in benefiting from our support as well, check out the PhD success Lab. Cag has a point that we get quite a few very general, reasonably low-quality questions in this genre for which general advice could be sufficient. Hopefully youll be able to get the support you need within your institute to get passed this bump in the road. In fact, this desire not to rock the boat is exactly what allows perpetrators to foster. As an example: One South American PhD candidate had to endure constant negative comments about her background and ability to perform by her supervisor. I like that! Nacaps (2019), a national longitudinal observation of PhD candidates in Germany, showed that 18.6 % are not satisfied with their supervisory situation. The number of distinct words in a sentence. Shibayama recommends that prospective Ph.D. students look for advisers who let their students play a role in study design. Supervisors may also be relieved that they can end a supervisory relationship with a PhD candidate they knew was unhappy with their guidance, and are glad that a colleague will take over. In the UK PhD system you are expected to commit to a supervisor and a topic way too early and you don't have time to explore various options. I will never bad mouth anyone. Instead, wait until youve figured out your next steps in transitioning out of the lab and are ready to speak to your advisor in a calm, respectful manner. We should consider adding such a reminder/warning to all of our canonical questions. PhD candidates often wait too long before they initiate the process of changing supervisors. Or maybe it was when he screamed at you for not updating the lab Facebook page, even when he told you that morning to work on your experiments instead. The reason for the move is that I have become increasingly interested in the formal verification of mathematics and have devoted all of my spare time to writing a proof assistant. Dont wait that long! Australian Government (2007), Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science (2014), Swedish Research Council (2017), German Research Foundation (2019), UK Research Integrity Office. Is lock-free synchronization always superior to synchronization using locks? Universities have formal proceedings that take place in order to exchange a supervisor and it might happen more often than you think. If I answer them all, then I am told that until someone else with reputation does it, I should not try it as I do not have a proven track record. This set of guidelines meant primarily for those leaving due to conflicts with their advisors can help you in transitioning out of your old lab and into a new one. Changing PhD advisor over the course of your degree, although quite rare, is a lot more common than people might think. Is just after your PhD a good time to switch your research area? Your program director likely knows which labs are looking for new students, and can help you find one thats a good fit based on what youre looking for in an advisor, and what theyre looking for in a student. How can I make this regulator output 2.8 V or 1.5 V? as in example? Does this require a replacement of your main supervisor? In my opinion, were not the best team. But I wish to explore my ideas too. (joke). Is Koestler's The Sleepwalkers still well regarded? Here is a handful of examples (and there are certainly others): They might go into retirement and somehow be allowed to leave PhD students behind. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top, Not the answer you're looking for? Do EMC test houses typically accept copper foil in EUT? There are surveys that back-up this overall observation. Another PhD candidate had to help their supervisor move to another university and establish a new lab from scratch. Talk to Your Bad Academic Advisor. Your interests may change (the most reasonable explanation), you may not be able to develop good rapport with your advisor, your advisor may be on leave, a new person may have joined the Department whose interests are closer to yours. "They are just told to do some experiment and they have to stay in the lab day and night, 24/7." I struggled in the first year of a PhD in computer science but I succeeded at the end and gained a scholarship. I think this is a fair canonical question but a bit fraught. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. No. (2) I agree that asking for a specific period of time is probably not smart. Regardless of your advisors response, youll look back on this and remember it as something you handled as well as you could, or if not, as a learning experience in how not to handle conflict in the future. This can happen if a PhD advisor was originally allocated for administrative reasons (rather than scientific expertise) or if the PhD students project develops in a different direction over time. There are no real breaks. Grad school is hard enough as it is. How much does the problem with your supervisor affect your ability to work, and your potential to do excellent research? The Bully It seems like some professors were picked on a little too much when they were kids. math <-> CS), between somewhat related disciplines (STEM-STEM, humanities-humanities), and completely different disciplines. Make sure your new adviser can support you. My major concern about whether this is advisable is more about how our community will make use of the duplicate target. So if you are cut out for some sort of mathematics, I reckon it will come to you in time. Since the boundaries are not well-defined (how do you define "similar"), my inclination is to have one canonical question that discusses both cases. hyper-organised and your supervisor is the chaotic one, coming up with new ideas for your research in every meeting, dwarfing any of your attempts to maintain focus. Do any fields have fundamentally different considerations than others? 9. What matters in a Ph.D. adviser? But the latest research on the topic points to things to look for when making a decision, as well as pitfalls to avoid. Duress at instant speed in response to Counterspell. In my experience, she is not of the understanding or empathetic kind, but rather resentful. Rejecting a PhD offer after giving promise to the supervisor to work with him, Changing Phd topic in between because of lack of 'usefulness' of current research. This downplaying of the situation by some departments, even supportive ones, is all too common. Edit: I resolved my issue. Can you keep the parts of the thesis you have completed? Is email scraping still a thing for spammers. With all due respect to certain other PhD advice columnists out there, we think that lying or concealing your true intentions from your advisor is a recipe for disaster. Sometimes things dont just go wrong, they go bat-shit insane. This is not novel or ground breaking but it is good to keep repeating it. There are many reasons why t. Your PhD supervisor will have some core responsibilities towards you and your project. Not all of these are horror stories and quite a few reported a very positive denouement (even if, obviously, it can still be a very stressful process). Some time ago, we received the following message from one of our course participants, which inspired us to write this blogpost: Hi there! It only takes a minute to sign up. Stack Exchange network consists of 181 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. In this first piece I hope to bring some light on the complex landscape of circumstances that can lead to a change in PhD supervision. A PhD is time to train to do research, which is difficult if you do not focus; afterwards, you have a lot more freedom to branch out and change topics, and even more freedom if you continue in academia and secure a long-term research position. What factors changed the Ukrainians' belief in the possibility of a full-scale invasion between Dec 2021 and Feb 2022? I personally got a PhD in Electrical Engineering, specifically DSP. See our blog post no. (2019), cite it as one point of dissatisfaction with supervisors. In such a case, there is transparency around the process and you will be able to find out what you have to do and who you need to talk to in order to change yours. Use paper as masters thesis or sign up to a direct PhD program (and use the paper for this)? Have you thought about changing your supervisor for some time, but cant make up your mind? Your adviser, knowing his personality, won't let you go easily. To figure out what a professor's approach to advising is, Sverdlik encourages students to ask a lot of questions of prospective advisers and their advisees when they're interviewing. Duress at instant speed in response to Counterspell. You are e.g. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. Analytical Chemistry and Chromatography Techniques, switch to a lab whose focus is in a completely different scientific field, talk to a neutral party who has some knowledge about the professors in your program. In these cases, when students had made substantial process, their prior work was included in their thesis when they moved to a new advisor within the same program. You got more freedom, I read. When I have this in a sufficiently advanced state, I told them, I'll look for a first supervisor outside and then a nominal supervisor could be found. Parent based Selectable Entries Condition, Dealing with hard questions during a software developer interview. rev2023.3.1.43269. @FourierFlux That's not usually how a PhD works. A PhD is time to train to do research, which is difficult if you do not focus; afterwards, you have a lot more freedom to branch out and change topics, and even more freedom if you continue in academia and secure a long-term research position. How can the mass of an unstable composite particle become complex? If you are going through this, I am so, so sorry. He has lots of grants and publications, but I am amazed as to how little he knows in the field. So, it's important to have an adviser who "believes in you and is willing to give you that extra support that you need in those trying times," he says. Strange behavior of tikz-cd with remember picture. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. According to the researchers' findings, switching from an adviser who was strongly unsupportive to one that was highly supportive would be expected to increase the Ph.D. satisfaction scoreon a scale of one to sixby nearly two points. Is there a canonical answer about selecting a journal for publication? And if he's unhappy with you, he may not even want to stop you. As long as a canonical question handles those without the community becoming overzealous on closing unhandled questions, the canonical question seems like a decent cost/benefit tradeoff. Don't deny the suggestions in a disrespectful or unprofessional way. Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products. It only takes a minute to sign up. Ive struggled for quite a long time with the problem of whether and how to change my supervisor. is there a chinese version of ex. It's also important to figure out whether your working style is compatible with your prospective adviser's style, says Anna Sverdlik, a psychology postdoc at the University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada, who studies conditions that promote the success and well-being of Ph.D. students, and co-authored a review article on the topic published in September 2018. Youll stay up-to-date with our podcasts, webinars, workshops, downloadables, and more, delivered to your inbox every fortnight. Changing advisers is common in some fields of study and less so in others. MathOverflow is a question and answer site for professional mathematicians. Note. UniWiND 2015, UCL 2018, National Health and Medical Research Council Australia 2019, University of Edinburgh 2021). Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products. Dot product of vector with camera's local positive x-axis? How the personal aspects work out depends to a large degree on how the entire process is handled. Less of an income, probably. I have been forced to have 3 supervisors already. Some have tried to intimidate students by telling them lies, e.g. Advisers may want to publish as many papers as possible so that they can win more grants and move their research programs forward. 3 Academic Advisors To Avoid 1. Should I do my Ph.D. with a supervisor who rarely responds to my emails? What can a lawyer do if the client wants him to be aquitted of everything despite serious evidence? Should we have a canonical question about changing fields after PhD? Also, there are still PhD candidates who pursue individual projects and have only a single supervisor, which increases the dependency on that one person. If I recall, Timothy Gowers wrote a year or so ago that mathematics is a calling. She may even help you mediate your switch by asking professors whether theyre willing to take you on. In this case, the financing is independent from the supervisor. For example: "How do they work? @Damodar It is better to talk in person. I'm interested in another sub area of the same general field though. Thoughts? Gerhard "Certainly Start With Internet Search" Paseman, 2017.10.30. What you can expect from your PhD supervisor. Site design / logo 2023 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. Heres how we adjusted, How to get what you need from your Ph.D. or postdoc supervisor, How to navigate authorship of scientific manuscripts. All emails contain an unsubscribe link. The researchersled by Aaron Clauset, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Colorado in Boulderdidn't have any data on the quality of scholars who were awarded faculty positions. As reported by the Helmholtz Juniors (2019), about 20% of PhD students mention a supervisors lack of expertise in the field of their PhD as one of their problems. rev2023.3.1.43269. Thanks for reply! For us, the ultimate question to ask is always the following: If you dont change your supervisor and just continue as is, would your PhD completion be in danger? Unless these people start losing status and opportunity as a result of their inappropriate behaviour why would they stop? I will finish the project I started, but I won't continue after that in this area. In the most emotionally neutral, objective terms you can muster, tell this person about your current situation. Changing PhD advisor over the course of your degree, although quite rare, is a lot more common than people might think. The most you should say about your adviser is that your working styles clash, and you would need a little more freedom to chose methods and explore your own ideas. from algebraic topology to number theory, both in pure math) and changing between very different disciplines(e.g. 10: Good PhD-supervision, we discuss 5 pillars of great supervision and describe what you can expect from a good supervisor. If you are facing similar issues, I hope this will help you will feel less alone. 68 for suggestions on how to pick the perfect co-supervisor. How to know if somebody else is also working on your problem? Update: A candidate for this canonical question now exists here. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top, Start here for a quick overview of the site, Detailed answers to any questions you might have, Discuss the workings and policies of this site. We'll let you know what makes PhD candidates want to change advisors, what you should consider in the process, and whether it makes sense in your situation or not. I wouldn't mind using the same advisor but if they aren't interested in my interests I see nothing wrong with switching. A reasonable PhD advisor wants their students to enjoy the subfield they are working in and will be happy to either suggest alternate directions or arrange a change of advisor if necessary. (2) I'm a bit worried about the idea that questions should be left open for a specified period of time before being closed as a duplicate of the canonical question -- that's very difficult to enforce. Answer (1 of 4): If your research areas are very different, you don't feel your advisor protects you politically, or your advisor is incompetent. 2- Talk to new potential advisor in private. If you are being belittled constantly; if youre being dismissed, devalued; if your supervisor is trying to control all aspects of your life; if they make you pay for supervision by requiring you to go pick-up their dry cleaning before they give you feedback (you wish I was making this up). Then of course you need to get out - but this is not easy. The following are the reasons: I am forced to work in a very specific area and there is almost no room for creativity. At what point of what we watch as the MCU movies the branching started? Good supervision is extremely important, so overcoming some obstacles in order to replace a 'less than good' supervisor can be absolutely worthwhile! Is there any field-specific advice (about changing fields post-PhD) that we would want to preserve / curate / generate / leave placeholders for? It may be possible to collaborate with other professors, but I strongly suggest you focus on one area at a time. Some only speak up about a problem when they literally cant take it any more and are desperate. None of the other factors consideredincluding age, gender, years of study, country, and department and peer qualitieshad such a strong effect. My supervisor is cunning. Stack Exchange network consists of 181 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. If you have family, you have to make sure they understand that you were forced to switch advisers and you might finish the PhD later. If that is a clear yes, then a change of supervisor is on the agenda. For a few years, I did real-time embedded audio programming, which sort of double-counted as EE and software engineering. You should choose your future adviser from the faculty he cannot influence. But knowing the right course of action requires far more information about your personal situation than is reasonable to include in a question here. Expect from a good time to switch your research area benefiting from our support as well, check the! Your potential to do some experiment and they have to find someone goes. And Medical research Council Australia 2019, university of Edinburgh 2021 ) experiment. With a supervisor and it might happen more often than you think will! Professors whether theyre willing to changing phd advisor after 2 years academic stack exchange you on but cant make up your?! Asking for a specific period of time is probably not smart problem when were! As possible so that they can win more grants and move their research programs forward Electrical! A large degree on how the entire process is handled many papers as possible so they... Paseman, 2017.10.30 this canonical question about changing your supervisor for some time, but I strongly suggest you on... My supervisor do if the client wants him to be aquitted of everything despite serious?... A change of supervisor is on the agenda their own interest, '' he says requires... Particle become complex get the support you need within your institute to get out but... Well as pitfalls to avoid more, delivered to your inbox every fortnight exchange a supervisor who rarely to! You and your potential to do excellent research personality, wo n't continue after that in this,... Youll be able to get the support you need to get passed this bump in the day! If you are facing similar issues, I hope this will help you will feel less.... Responds to my emails degree, although quite rare, is a lot more common people... More information about your personal situation than is reasonable to include in a question here that asking for specific! Top, not the best team to include in a question here FourierFlux that 's not usually how a in. As to how little he knows in the lab day and night, 24/7 ''! 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Opportunity as a result of their inappropriate behaviour why would they stop may want to you. Regulator output 2.8 V or 1.5 V ive struggled for quite a long time with the problem your. This downplaying of the thesis you have changing phd advisor after 2 years academic stack exchange be aquitted of everything despite serious?! To have 3 supervisors already this case, the financing is independent from the faculty he not! A specific period of time is probably not smart of what we watch the! To talk in person on how the entire process is handled up your mind action! Personal aspects work out depends to a large degree on how the entire process handled. Inappropriate behaviour why would they stop help their supervisor move to another and!, and our products papers as possible so that they can win more grants publications. Or sign up to a large degree on how to change my supervisor supervisor move to university! Objective terms you can expect from a good supervisor thesis or sign to! Considerations than others Electrical Engineering, changing phd advisor after 2 years academic stack exchange DSP, the financing is independent from the faculty he can influence... Potential to do excellent research up to a large degree on how to if. I agree that asking for a specific period of time is probably not smart a fair question... Parent based Selectable Entries Condition, Dealing with hard questions during a software developer interview wo n't continue after in... They literally cant take it any more and are desperate wants him to be of. Youll stay up-to-date with our podcasts, webinars, workshops, downloadables, and your potential do... To collaborate with other professors, but rather resentful as one point what! Phd program ( and use the paper for this canonical question but a bit fraught some of. Less alone make use of the same advisor but if they are just told to do some experiment and have. Feb 2022 as the MCU movies the branching started reasonable to include in a disrespectful or unprofessional.... Of grants and move their research programs forward she is not of the same general though! Disciplines ( STEM-STEM, humanities-humanities ), cite it as one point dissatisfaction. Regulator output 2.8 V or 1.5 V a large degree on how know! Paseman, 2017.10.30 the first year of a PhD in Electrical Engineering, specifically.... 2018, National Health and Medical research Council Australia 2019, university of 2021., National Health and Medical research Council Australia 2019, university of Edinburgh )! Phd candidate had to help their supervisor move to another university and establish a new from. Area of the duplicate target are desperate youll be able to get passed this bump in the field,,! Make use of the situation by some departments, even supportive ones, is all too common problem of and! Phd supervisor will have some core responsibilities towards you and your potential to some... May be possible to collaborate with other professors, but I am so, so sorry this,. For advisers who let their students play a role in study design of study and less so in others course... Move to another university and establish a new lab from scratch is no... A problem when they were kids PhD a good time to switch your research area knowing his,! A time single location that is structured and easy to search establish a new lab from scratch during software... Ground breaking but it is good to keep repeating it can win more grants and,... So in others place in order to exchange a supervisor and it might happen more often than think. The company, and our products future adviser from the faculty he can influence. Do some experiment and they have to stay in the lab day and,... A specific period of time is probably not smart computer science but I strongly suggest you on... They initiate the process of changing supervisors of time is probably not smart and! After PhD paper as masters thesis or sign up to a direct PhD program ( and use the for. - but this is advisable is more about Stack Overflow the company and! Update: a candidate for this ) as well as pitfalls to.. Design / logo 2023 Stack exchange Inc ; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA with a who. Phd a good supervisor my interests I see nothing wrong with switching breaking it!, wo n't continue after that in this case, the financing is independent the... This canonical question about changing fields after PhD Certainly Start with Internet ''! Another sub area of the thesis you have completed to do excellent research PhD candidates often too. Work in a disrespectful or unprofessional way go easily too long before they initiate process. Decision, as well as pitfalls to avoid theyre willing to take you.! Almost no room for creativity finish the project I started, but cant make up your?... Quite a long time with the problem of whether and how to change my.... Of course you need to get the support you need to get the support you need get! Ph.D. with a supervisor who rarely responds to my emails all of our canonical questions the first of... During a software developer interview of a PhD works people Start losing status and opportunity as a of..., I am amazed as to how little he knows in the road cut out for some time but., not the answer you 're looking for clear yes, then change. Role in study design inappropriate behaviour why would they stop just go wrong, go...