Ongoing Conversations
Communicating with advisors and collaborators
All of us are busy and buried beneath piles of papers, emails, and responsibilities. In most respects, communicating with your advisor adheres to the same principles as communicating with anyone else: keep your messages short and concise while still including all relevant information, and identify what actions, if any, you want recipients to take. And, by all means, avoid surprises if at all possible (e.g., raising topics/concerns for the first time at Reviews of Progress).
-
Ask your advisor and collaborators about their email habits and follow-up strategies. It is totally acceptable to send a reminder (or two) if you need something from your advisor or a collaborator and they haven't responded to you in a reasonable time frame (which may vary from a day to a week, depending on their assessment of the criticality of your request).
-
Inform your advisor(s) and collaborators about your own working hours and response times so that you don’t surprise them with a delayed response, especially near a deadline or around holidays or vacations.
-
Some advisors and collaborators use messaging platforms such as Slack to communicate, while others only use email. Try to determine early on preferred communication platforms, email frequency, and etiquette so you can make communication comfortable and fluid for all parties. In most cases, the student should adapt their communication style to the advisor’s preference.
-
Cultural differences in communication. Establish how to address your advisor, by first name or using an honorific. Correct anyone who mispronounces your name (unless you really don’t care about that). Be aware of the fact that even though in some cultures it is not considered acceptable to disagree with a professor (or even a peer), in the Allen School, it is normal. Indeed, you are encouraged to express yourself honestly in your meetings with your advisor, even if that entails disagreeing with them about an opinion or a course of action, so long as all communication is respectful and so long as you can provide an explanation for your point of view.
Meeting deadlines
Publishing papers or writing grant proposals is beneficial not only to you, but to your collaborators and advisor(s) (e.g., for funding, tenure considerations, etc.). It is a collective responsibility.
-
When you agree with your advisor on a plan of action, e.g., to submit a paper, make sure you understand exactly what’s expected of you. This might be as simple as asking, "What are my responsibilities relative to our co-authors with respect to the writing/research?” Or “When and where will my time be most useful?" when deadlines are approaching. It is likely that your advisor will expect you to be consistently available in the days preceding a deadline (and you might expect this of them, too).
-
Slips happen. If you feel a deadline is unrealistic to meet for whatever reason, have an honest discussion with your advisor about this as soon as possible. Do not commit to something that you know you will be unable to deliver. Advisors can help you devise alternative research strategies or plan for subsequent paper deadlines. For example, if you are struggling to get last-minute results or revise the writing based on reviewer comments and you feel overwhelmed, it is not unreasonable to tell your advisor that you are unlikely to meet the current deadline, that trying to do so is taking a toll on you, and that you will be able to produce a stronger paper if you target the next conference with your efforts. The only thing worse than missing a deadline is doing so without informing your advisor and collaborators with as much lead time as possible.
Submitting papers
If you are submitting a paper with your advisors and collaborators, make sure to have a conversation with them about logistics, timelines, and credit well in advance.
-
If you are the lead author on the paper in an applied area, you are typically responsible for doing the bulk of the research that goes into the paper as well as taking the lead in writing.
-
Be sure to discuss with your advisor(s) and your co-authors any expectations that you have for them and they have for you.
-
Be especially clear with your advisors and collaborators about the timeline for writing, and leave time for everyone to make contributions at the agreed-upon level. No one does their best work in a last-minute rush, and you cannot necessarily expect your advisor (or other senior collaborators) to be available at the last minute. Clear communication and realistic planning are critical!
You should also discuss how to assign appropriate credit to each author by selecting a proper author order. Your advisor(s) can help you with these decisions. (In some research areas, this question is irrelevant as author order is always alphabetical.)
Attending to personal matters
We are all human. If a serious personal/family problem arises, you should attend to it! Notify your advisor as soon as possible about how your work might be affected or breaks you may need to take. (If you are going to be less productive, don’t try to hide it and hope that your productivity will stay up or that your advisor won’t notice your reduced productivity. Those strategies do not work!) The extent to which you discuss personal concerns depends on your relationship, boundaries, and your level of comfort. Your advisor cares about you and will try to help, but remember that their professional training is in computer science, not counseling. However, it is good to communicate early and clearly about the potential impact on your work.
The University of Washing has a number of health resources you can take advantage of, including free counseling offered on-campus and other benefits through your graduate student health insurance (GAIP). The UW makes 24/7 support available through MySSP; additionally our Self-Care and Support page and the Husky Health & Well-Being website are good places to start when looking for healthcare.
Taking a complete break from time to time is important and indeed encouraged. Discuss your plans for taking personal time or vacation with your advisor as far in advance as possible, especially if it might affect an important deadline. Be explicit about the start and length of your vacation. Also discuss how responsive, if at all, you expect to be during your time away. Note that being responsive is not a requirement! The critical factor is setting accurate expectations. Advisors expect that your work will be completed in accordance with deadlines; proactively informing them about break times will help maintain a smooth relationship.
If you need to take leave from the program for a quarter or more, you should discuss your plans with both your advisor(s) and the grad advising team . In particular, the grad advising team can help you understand the UW policies about academic leave, maintaining your health insurance if needed, and considerations around leave for international students. See also Article 17 of the Academic Student Employee Contract for information about medical leaves as they relate to your student employment.
Taking summer internships
The three academic year funding guarantee does not include summers. It is important to consult with your advisor about your summer plans as early as Fall quarter, especially to determine the likelihood of being funded as an RA over the summer and/or to discuss internships. The Allen School also offers a very limited number of TA positions in the summer. See our funding policies for more information about summer funding and conversations you should have with your advisor in preparation for summer.
Many students choose to pursue internships in the summer. Summer internship searches may begin as early as the middle of Autumn quarter of the previous year since large companies start recruiting around that time.
-
Discuss internships with your advisor early on to get their opinion as to when and whether it is a good idea for you to try to get one. (Summer internships are often very useful early in grad school, and are often a distraction late in grad school, but each student’s situation is unique.) Many advisors help their students find and apply for internships, so be sure to reach out to them for their help as appropriate. Here are some reasons they are useful.
-
Inform advisors about your plans, any internship applications you have submitted, and any internship decisions you make.
-
Be clear about communication and work expectations with your advisor during the internship. For example, some advisors prefer that you still meet with them regularly and may ask you to work on your research project based on grant/funding requirements or deadlines that happen to fall during your internship. Others might be okay with letting you completely detach from Allen School-related responsibilities. In either case, discuss these expectations and your preferences before starting the internship.
-
On occasion, you and your advisor may disagree on whether doing an internship is a good idea or not. If this is a serious disagreement, it may indicate a problem between you and your advisor that should be further considered. We recommend consulting with the grad advising team if this is the case.
-
The Allen School offers resources on finding internships, including advice articles written by faculty and students as well internship job postings. Check out our PhD Internship Support pages and our Industry Affiliates program.
Funding
For details on funding, please carefully read about Allen School Funding Policies. In this section, we briefly summarize some key points.
While the Allen School guarantees funding for the first 3 years of your PhD (excluding summers), this may come from a fellowship, RA, TA, or a combination of sources. Your funding source determines what additional responsibilities you will perform in addition to research and coursework.
To effectively plan your research and schedule in general, it is important to understand how you can expect to be funded. This may involve asking your advisor questions such as:
-
What should I expect my funding sources to be for the next quarter/this summer/next year/in the long run? What responsibilities come with this funding?
-
If offered a summer quarter RA: Will my summer quarter RA be a 40 or a 20 hour per week position? (Note that the answer to this question could affect your interest in internships.)
-
Will you support me for the XYZ fellowship application?
-
Will you sponsor my visit to the XYZ conference? More generally, what is your funding policy for attending conferences (e.g., is it necessary to have published a paper, are there any upper bounds on the number of conferences you will fund per year, etc.)?
Advisors may not have the funds to offer you an RA position every quarter. However, they can certainly help you find interesting courses to TA or or enlist your help to apply for grants or fellowships that could help fund your research. Ultimately it is your responsibility to drive this process.
See also:
Clarifying your professional goals
It is important for you to discuss your near- and long-term professional goals with your advisor(s) at least once a year so that they can best help you achieve them. For example, tell your advisor whether your long-term goal is to go into academia (research or teaching), industry (research or engineering), startups, or somewhere else.
Your advisor can help you to achieve these goals: the best research paths, whom you might reach out to for an internship, how to set up a collaboration with a different research group or company, etc. They can also help with networking.
Note that your goals and your advisor’s goals and expectations may not be fully aligned. Some advisors may expect their students to publish a certain number of papers before graduation (e.g., “a dissertation ≈ 3 related papers”) or prefer their students to publish in more selective venues. These might even be conditions for working with them. If your goal is to remain in academia and become a professor, these expectations likely align well with your goals. However, these expectations can mean a longer time to Ph.D., and, if you intend to go into industry, publications may not be as important. At the same time, other advisors may not be particularly interested in publishing; in this case, it may be harder to get your advisor engaged in the paper writing process, making it more difficult if you want to remain in academia.
Certain advisors are more flexible than others about adjusting their expectations. If possible, talk to recent graduates from your lab about how well they felt your advisor’s expectations matched their career goals and how flexible they were in adjusting expectations.
The Allen School annual Review of Progress (RoP) meetings are an excellent time for such discussions. However, you may raise these issues with your advisor at other times as well.
Knowing your advisor's plans
You should know your advisor’s plans for the next few years in terms of going on sabbatical or taking industrial leaves. These plans will influence how much time they have available to advise you. It may also mean they are in a different geographical location.
If they plan to go on sabbatical/industrial leave in the near future, you might consider finding a co-advisor to work with you in their absence.
Review of progress (ROP)
Ongoing conversations identified in this module, especially those more big picture discussions about how your research is going and your plans going forward, should occur at your annual review of progress meeting with your advisor each spring.
If your advisor does not set up a RoP meeting, take the initiative to do so yourself!
The ongoing conversations with your advisor identified in this section will undoubtedly also come up on occasion in meetings other than the annual ROP meeting. Hopefully though, many of these will be clarified in a few conversations. If you find yourself repeatedly cycling on any of these issues, it may indicate a serious mismatch in style.
As discussed here, prior to your annual RoP meeting, you will be filling out a self-assessment. As part of that self-assessment, you will have the opportunity to provide direct feedback to your advisor. In addition, you will be able to provide confidential feedback that will not be seen by your advisor, but will be forwarded to a faculty review committee.