Reaching supervisors
Students find it difficult to get and
keep in touch with their supervisors.
Different students need different sorts of support. Some are more independent, others are more in need of guidance. While this will be a broadly experienced fact of academic life, it leaves the momentary capacity of supervisors largely out of sight. While students are recognized to need varying and changing levels of support, supervisors are generally considered to be service providers who should ideally provide a reliable level of service throughout the project. But are supervisors so different, in that regard?
In The Student’s Research Companion, we discuss that the first step to a productive student-supervisor relationships might be to reflect on which role your supervisor will most likely attempt to fulfil. This role is not easily characterized, but it typically is not that of a boss, a project leader, a tour guide, or any other figure that suggests the students to hand over responsibility for their project. We have settled on describing supervisors as more experienced peers who have agreed to be associated with the project at least as an examiner, ideally as an academic mentor. How supervisors interpret their roles varies from one academic to the next, and often also with the individual person’s workload. This is why it is so important to scout potential supervisors and to try to determine if one’s own need for supervision will likely be met by the supervisors on one’s short list. None of this makes a terribly busy (or laissez-faire) supervisor more accessible, but it should enable students to carefully pre-determine if the supervisor they sign up with will actually be a good fit for them, be it in terms of availability, degree of support, or style of communication.
Instead of worrying about difficult student-supervisor relationships, let’s make expectations explicit and encourage students to seek supervisors they might match well with.
For supervisors, it will be useful to reflect on what they are willing to invest into student research projects and how they would picture an ideal interaction with students during work on their thesis. If there are certain boundaries, make them explicit. If there are expectations to be met, just as much. Be open and transparent about how you expect the student-supervisor-relationship ought to work, and publish these thoughts prominently for every interested student to find. For students, it will be useful to try to get in touch with graduates who were supervised by the academics on their short list. While at it, students might scan the structure and depth of previously supervised works by those who they might engage. Make one of the first steps of your research project not only a reflection on what you would like to explore, but how you would like to work and who would fit best to your preferred style. Even if you do not find an immediate match, you will at least be more prepared and likely more able to accommodate a misfit in work-and supervision styles.
Do you as a supervisor have an explicit supervision profile on your list of open projects for students to work on? Did you as a student ever consciously reflect on and capture what you are looking for in a supervisor?