How to Work Well With Graduate Students (Chronicle Vitae)

March 30, 2020
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Scenario: A doctoral student comes by your office to ask if you will serve as a reader on her dissertation committee. While a senior professor is chairing her committee, she wants you to help with the "heaving lifting." You start shifting in your seat, wishing there was a pause button you could hit as you figure out the best thing to say. You want to support this student — but as an assistant professor, a few years from tenure, you need to protect your time and avoid stepping on her adviser’s toes. Do you say no and clarify the roles of dissertation chair versus reader? Do you say yes and support the student in the way she is asking? Or do you ask her to first clarify your role with her adviser?  Read more.