MSC student
I met with my student for the first time in a month. (My three conferences/meetings in North America broke our last scheduled meeting. Also, he did not present his research plan as scheduled three weeks ago, and has rescheduled for November.) He emailed the latest draft of his first three chapters. I marked perhaps ten sentence mechanics issues (a few less frequent cases of definite and indefinite articles), and another ten style concerns throughout. (I suggested that shifting tense within a paragraph was not the best idea, and that some sentence constructions.) I am really impressed with his progress. I had emailed both him and my co-supervisor that his draft made more sense than the papers I had reviewed recently for an international journal. (Then I found out that another student supervised by my co-supervisor, who works at the same firm as our student and started his thesis at the same time and was further along in the thesis, has hit a wall.) I am also pleased to challenge him to nail down his interpretations, ideas, and concepts.
I am concerned that this will set me up with unreasonably high expectations for future students. I will also have less material to discuss with my colleagues in North America who have helped me on this supervisory adventure.
My co-supervisor was pleased that the student had included 17 of the required 50 references. The student's development of ideas and themes so far doesn't ring any alarm bells, but I'll take a more detailed look at the references this week anyway since it's important to both of them.
We're now in the middle of the effort and since our original meeting schedule had run out. We decided to fix meetings on a weekly basis until the thesis is complete. I also demanded thesis drafts on Wednesdays from now on, so that I could comment in time for the student and co-supervisor to digest on Thursday before our meetings.
The student had not found himself a dedicated paper notebook for the academic part of this project, so I stepped out of the meeting to raid the supply closet.
He is using a design research methodology (mostly at my co-supervisor's insistence), which requires analysing various factors and conditions that occur during a design process. My co-supervisor and I repeatedly emphasised the importance of keeping track of the unique circumstances in which the student works, and the importance of having a memory aid at hand for figuring out the important theoretical and applied analyses later. The three of us agreed that the student would write or sketch at least half a page per day (my co-supervisor is into diagrams and figures).
I asked him to tell us the story of the project so far from the firm perspective. (Insert standard IT consulting project story here.) This helped all three of us think about how best to approach the big picture. My co-supervisor had independently concluded that the link from theory to empirical research could be stronger. She left it as an open question in our pre-meeting discussion; I had sketched some thoughts (to help me summarise with the student's work so far) on the hardcopy of the latest thesis draft. I don't know if that will be helpful for the student.
My co-supervisor also emphasised the importance of getting the thesis done in this calendar year, even if course credits are incomplete. Theses completed next year will be worth fewer course credits than in this year. For the next three year budget cycle, which comes up in the spring, the university will use the number of MSCs completed as a metric. 2007 was a good year in that regard, but will not be counted, so we apparently need to complete as many MSCs as possible in the next two months. (I also learned that it's not unusual to complete the thesis before completing coursework requirements.) In an internal department e-mail on Friday, my co-supervisor reminded everyone of the rewards of supervising an MSC to completion: 50 paid work hours (at 32.5 hours per week) to do whatever, and funding to attend a discretionary conference. (I'm externally funded, so the 50 hours do not affect me; I'll take the conference funding though.)
I ended with the usual open-ended "what questions do you have for us?", which again didn't elicit any questions from the student. (My co-supervisor had not thought to ask this.) I'm considering a different approach since he has not asked any questions in this context so far.
An unusual PhD defense
Scheduled start: 12:15. Actual start 12:30. This has apparently never happened before.
The fifteen of us in the audience stood as the candidate, his supervisor, and the external opponent, entered in that order. The candidate and the supervisor both wore identical tail-suits. The supervisor carried a doctoral hat (600e), wore white gloves, and a white bow tie. The candidate assumed the podium at right without a bow tie. The opponent wore a business suit under his academic regalia. I'm told that it's usually business casual for defenses.
After a scripted exchange of pleasantries and introductions, the candidate, a native English speaker, read an abbreviated version of his introductory chapter for the first 20 minutes. It was a compilation dissertation. Candidates normally present something more substantial, I'm told. The opponent (from a featured US IS school) asked some softball questions, including "which part of your research do you think was the best?" ("the best part was the part I enjoyed the most"), some technical minutia about where and how some details appeared in the printed document ("copy and paste error in the diagram, it's correct in the matrix"), "on which of the chapters are you the lead author?" ("the first three"), and "what was your strategy to choose journals to submit to?". The opponent also gave the audience some practical publication tips!
The supervisor (who looked a little too much like Mr. Bean for my comfort) took notes and fidgeted for the 90 minute exchange without speaking a word to the audience. He closed the ceremony with more script. The examiner was apparently supposed to hold forth for an extended period about the strengths and weaknesses of the dissertation, but closed with a recommendation that the faculty accept the dissertation. When asked if anyone knew of any reason why these two should not be wed the dissertation should not be accepted, one audience member asked "why did you choose exactly four studies?", to which the acceptable response was "my supervisor said so". My guess is that the opponent was jet-lagged if he had flown in from the US. Several times he attributed to old age some problems he had navigating his own notes.
My co-supervisor (from the above story) and I discussed the defense on the way out to coffee and cake. The first thing she said was: "I have never seen a dissertation or defense like this before." Four unpublished co-authored chapters seemed weak to both of us. At coffee, I asked about the tail-suits. No one knew, and we dared not ask either of the dapper gentlemen. I was asked if I knew why the opponent was wearing a strange costume. I explained North American convocation ceremony customs regarding academic dress, but I made it clear that I had no idea why it was deployed at the defense.
Bonus: Lessons from my former supervisor
While in North America, I took the opportunity to ask my former Master's supervisor about supervising. He told several stories about his experiences as a post-doc in the UK being supervised, as well as about supervising some of my predecessors and myself. We had always had a good working relationship as research collaborators, and a good personal relationship through good food, travel, and drink, but we had never discussed supervising in any detail. (He told me that this was the first time he had ever been asked to externalise his knowledge about supervising and teaching.) We had a good talk about the importance of communicating regularly and substantially (both the supervisor's and the student's responsibility to keep the relationship healthy; credit where credit is due); using different learning and teaching styles for different students (if possible adapt to the student, rather than expect the student to adapt); encouraging students to find and exploit their own areas of excellence; and the importance of learning how to supervise by supervising.
He confirmed that he did not know of any formal resources to help novice supervisors learn to supervise.
(I would like to collaborate with any knowledgable or interested reader to patch this gap in practice and in the literature.)
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