Roles and responsibilities
As a supervisor, you should learn about your responsibilities and how they change over the years, but most importantly you should learn why and how well-defined expectations help prevent problems and ensure success. Monitoring your student's progress is a process that encourages both of you to define and discuss expectations, thereby improving communication and the supervisory relationship.
Highlights of this subsection
- Clarifying expectations: questions such as who has the right to publish
- New supervisors: gaining over the long term a repertoire of skills
- Roles over time: how the supervisory role changes through a program
- Mentoring: how to think of students to become a mentor in addition to supervisor
- Monitoring student progress: the myth of time wasted in monitoring
- Co-supervision: why a supervisor should share the benefits of supervision
- Infrastructure and resources: creating an inventory to help students
Interacting with supervisees
You and each of your supervisees are in a professional, often near-peer relationship. The characteristics of this relationship affect your job satisfaction and the educational experiences of your supervisees. Its qualities, styles, and interactions can be diverse, but evidence and experience support some practices more than others.
Highlights of this subsection
- Student-supervisor relationships: the importance of mutual respect and openness
- Giving feedback: the myth of needing to offer feedback only once
- Supervisory styles: achieving a balance between selfless and selfish supervision
- Recognizing student diversity: how to be reflective and active on diversity
Improving your supervisory practice
At McGill, the improvement of graduate supervision is a priority. The planning document entitled “Achieving Academic Priorities: ASAP 2012-2017” states that McGill will “implement, in partnership with units across the University, a program to enhance all aspects of graduate supervision” (p. 39). Supervisors are not alone in implementing enhancements but may work with Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies and other units.
Highlights of this subsection
- Self-assessment: experiential learning and self-reflection
- Feedback from supervisees: direct and indirect feedback
- Talking with colleagues: observing a colleague at work
- Quality assurance: how to (tentatively) define quality