Nurturing a Culture of Effective Supervision of Doctoral Students

Maureen Grasso, Michael Carter

North Carolina State University

Laura Lunsford, University of Arizona

Effective Supervisors

• Are great mentors (Johnson, 2007; Lunsford, 2012, 2014; Rose, 2003)

• Have the best interests of their students at heart.

• Have as their primary goal to assist students to create a pathway to success.

Mentoring

Is an important factor for doctoral completion (Council on Graduate Schools (nd); Lovitts, 2001; Lunsford, 2012)

Occurs when students form productive working relationships with faculty and peers (Schlosser et al., 2003)

Effective Supervisors Provide

Career Support:• Prompt feedback on performance• Acculturation into a the discipline

Psychosocial Support:• Access to their attention and time• Encouragement, self-confidence, and emotional

support, especially when there are obstacles

Nurturing a Culture of Effective Supervision

Begins with strategic plans that integrate mentoring with institutional goals (Zachary, 2006)

NC State University : The Pathway to the Future

“Enhancing the success of our students”

The Graduate School Plan

Enhancing success through better mentoring

Initial focus on improving faculty

Visibility & Value: Reinforcing Messages, Enhancing Student Success – Mentoring

• Consistent message from the dean • Working with senior associate deans to

begin discussions in their units– College of Sciences– College of Humanities and Social Sciences– College of Education

How Can We Improve Mentoring?

• Recognize limits for improving mentoring at the institutional level

• Need to work with units and individual mentors

• But…. apart from anecdotes, we had no source of information about mentoring at the individual or unit levels

Institution

Unit

Dyads

Institutional Context

• 10 academic colleges (emphasis on engineering and sciences)

• Total students: 33,898 • Graduate students: 8,681 • Doctoral students: 3,267 • Doctoral programs: 62 • Graduate faculty: 2,805

Guiding Questions

• How can we identify excellent supervisors or units to be used as models and sources of best practices?

• How can we identify supervisors or units that may benefit from focused intervention?

• How can we benchmark and track our efforts to improve mentoring?

Answering Our Guiding Questions

Development of metrics to improve supervisory mentoring

(Created by Michael Carter, David Edelman, Richard Liston, and Joseph Perez)

Questions About Supervising Students

• How effective are supervisors and units in contributing to

graduate student research?

• How effective are supervisors and units in advancing

students in a timely manner?

• How effective are supervisors and units in enabling

students to complete their degrees?

• How effective are supervisors and units in contributing to

student research in interdisciplinary programs?

Effectiveness in Contributing to Student Research?

• Number of doctoral committees faculty have chaired or co-chaired

• Number of master’scommittees

• Number of committees other than chair/co-chair

• Number of researchassistants supported

Effectiveness in Advancing Students in a Timely Manner?

• Time to doctoral student’s

initial plan of work for faculty

serving as chair or co-chair

• Time to passing doctoral

prelims

• Time to doctoral degrees

• Time to master’s degrees

Effectiveness in Enabling students to Complete Degrees?

• 6-, 8-, and 10-year doctoral completion rates• Rates of doctoral students not graduated after 8 years• Number of students who left after years 1-5 and 6-10

Effectiveness in Contributing to Interdisciplinary Education?

• Number of advisory committees served on outside the

home department

• Number of advisory committees chaired or co-chaired

outside home department

• Number of advisory committees served on in

interdisciplinary programs

Anon Anon

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Strategies for Identifying Mentoring Role Models and Sources of Best Practices

• For faculty who have supervised the most doctoral committees, identify those with the lowest time to degree

• For departments that have among the lowest overall times to degree, identify faculty in those departments with the lowest TTD

• For faculty who have supervised 10 or more doctoral students, Identify those with the highest 6-year completion rates

Advisors Committees Time to Prelim Time to Degree

A 49 4.0 5.1

B 32 5.6 6.9

C 27 2.9 4.0

D 25 4.9 7.6

E 24 3.3 5.8

F 23 2.5 5.7

G 22 2.4 4.4

H 22 3.4 4.6

I 21 3.7 10.0

J 21 4.7 5.8

K 19 2.3 4.7

L 19 2.3 6.0

M 18 2.1 4.8

Most Doctoral Committees with TTD

References• Council on Graduate Schools. (nd). PhD Completion Project. Retrieved from:

http://www.cgsnet.org/phd-completion-project• Johnson, W. B. (2007). Transformational supervision: When supervisors mentor.

Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 38(3), 259-267.• Lovitts, B. E. (2001). Leaving the ivory tower: The causes and consequences of

departure from doctoral study. Rowman & Littlefield.• Lunsford, L.G. (2012). Doctoral advising or mentoring? Effects on student outcomes.

Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 251-270.• Lunsford, L. G. (2014). Mentors, tormentors, and no mentors: mentoring scientists.

International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 3(1), 4-17.• Rose, G.L. (2003). Enhancement of mentor selection using the ideal mentor scale.

Research in Higher Education, Vol. 44 No. 4, pp. 473-494.• Schlosser, L. Z., Knox, S., Moskovitz, A. R., & Hill, C. E. (2003). A qualitative

examination of graduate advising relationships: The advisee perspective. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 50(2), 178.

• Zachary, L. J. (2006). Creating a Mentoring Culture: The Organization’s Guide. Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal, 20(4).

Questions?