by Christina Castro, Ph.D.
Counseling and Psychological Services

Finding the right advisor and maintaining a positive relationship can be one of the most important aspects of your graduate education. Some graduate students believe that problems with your advisor can be fatal to your academic career. Research has demonstrated that the graduate student advisor can have a tremendous influence on the developmental outcome of the graduate student’s personal and professional goals. Additionally, it has been found that graduate students who had favorable mentors in graduate school had more publications, more conference papers, more first authored papers, and were more productive post graduation. Some graduate students “fall” into these very important relationships as a result of automatic assignments, similar research area, or, worst of all, not taking the time to find the best fit. Following are some suggestions to consider in choosing an advisor and subsequently maintaining a healthy relationship.

Choosing an advisor

1. Generate a list of expectations for your advisory relationship.
2. Review your needs and your preferred work style.
   • Look for a good match in your work styles based on your needs in the relationship (e.g. hands on or hands off, bold critiques or nurturing and hand holding).
3. Spend time getting to know the faculty and their work styles.
4. Don’t be in a hurry to settle on an advisor.
5. Hone in on a few candidates and do some research.
   • How long have they been on faculty?
   • What is the average time their graduate students take to complete their degrees?
   • How do advisors feel about graduate students not working on research in their area?
   • How do advisors deal with or perceive time off, vacation, time away from lab?
   • Attend their research seminars and possibly one of their research meetings.
   • Ask if they have TA or RA positions available or ongoing research to get involved with.
   • Read some of their work and some of their students’ work.
   • Audit some of their lectures or an entire class if possible.
   • Talk to other graduate students and look for the preponderance of evidence in one direction or the other.
   • And, any other implicit rules that the advisor has for graduate students.
6. If possible, find an advisor who is doing high quality research in your area of interest.
7. Look for an advisor who will serve as a mentor and as a source of technical assistance.
8. Look for good teaching and communication skills.
9. Identify an advisor who actively markets/champions their students.
   • Introduces their graduate students to visiting speakers.
   • Invites their graduate students to conferences and introduces them to colleagues.
   • Expresses willingness to include their graduate students on grants.
   • Encourages their graduate students to write and submit papers.
10. Remember, it is always possible to change. Not ideal, but possible.

These suggestions may feel tedious and time consuming, however, graduate students who have had negative advisor-advisee relationships would agree that taking the time to choose the right advisor would have saved them countless headaches and immeasurable stress. A structure that has been used in some departments is rotations that give each student a sample experience of working with the advisor. This trial period was helpful with some students discovering they didn’t want to work with faculty whose work they had been attracted to because of the advisor’s style. This sample experience was more difficult to arrange although not impossible in the humanities and social sciences. Serving as a teaching assistant to a professor might provide some of the same results.

Once you have taken the time to find the right advisor for you, half the battle is over. Maintaining a positive relationship with your advisor is an ongoing process. While the relationship may require time you don’t think you have, a positive relationship with your advisor can mean the difference between satisfaction and dissatisfaction with your program. Following are some tips for maintaining a positive relationship with your advisor.

Tips for a positive advisor-advisee relationship

1. Discuss expectations at the outset.
2. Identify goals for your academic career.
3. State and re-state your needs.
4. Take responsibility for the relationship.
5. Attempt to resolve a problem before taking it to the next level.
6. Maintain open communication.
7. Follow up with a written recap of conversations including identified action items.
8. Give each party the benefit of the doubt.
9. Stay solution focused and don’t make it personal.
10. Be aware of the power differential, but do not let it govern the relationship.

Not every graduate student will have a positive relationship with their advisor. Sometimes there is a need for change if the relationship is a poor fit. In the case of a poor fit or a problematic relationship, students can get formal or informal consultation from their department graduate coordinator, other faculty committee members, post doctoral fellows, and/or CAPS staff.

Overall, basic communication and assertiveness skills can be very helpful in managing the relationship with your advisor. Most graduate students never lose site of the power differential in which case the communication and assertiveness can be tempered depending on your comfort level. As stated earlier, however, the power differential does not have to govern the relationship. While this can be an extremely stressful and difficult relationship for some graduate students, most of the time, there is great potential in the advisory relationship.