You will be introduced via email to your temporary advisor in June. You probably already know who this is and may already be interacting with them.

Our faculty, staff, and grads co-authored "How to get good advising: information about the grad student - advisor relationship." This is an in-depth explanation of how to best interact with your faculty advisors. It is worth your time to read it entirely.

Here are some things to know about our initial advising scheme:

  • Our program assigns a temporary advisor to all new graduate students.
  • The temporary advisor has administrative, advising/research advising, and mentoring roles.
  • As much as possible, we try to assign students to faculty who share some of your interests. Most of the time temporary advisors become permanent advisors, and sometimes not. What's important is that you have a good relationship with your temp advisor so you feel comfortable asking for what you need, especially during your first year.

Here are some of the things your temporary advisor can do for you, not in any particular order:

  • Help fine-tune the scheduling of your classes for the year (Registration info here).
  • Make sure you're OK by checking in regularly to see how you're doing in the program, coursework, adjusting to grad school. You're encouraged to ask for meetings! (It is one of your temp advisor's responsibilities to be available for meetings).
  • Discuss your research interests with you and help define them.
  • Point you to resources, especially with regard to research opportunities.
  • Point you to other faculty (in the Allen School or on campus) who might have interesting (to you) research.
  • Chat about the Allen School past and present, or anything else that you have questions about.
  • Help you start thinking about quals, a quals project, a quals advisor.
  • Start research!

The list above is by no means everything a temporary advisor can do--it will depend on you and the advisor and what you need to succeed in our program. Remember that you have to ask your advisor if you need help. The faculty are pretty smart, but most are not great at reading minds. ;)