Proactive student advising is integral to student success. The College of Graduate Studies provides resources to assist programs with proactive advisement of graduate students. This section is designed to provide program directors and graduate faculty with a reference guide for policy, processes and related reports and forms so that you can properly advise your students and ensure a well-rounded graduate student experience and successful student completion.

Advisement and Mentoring of Students

One of the most important lessons learned from nationwide retention studies is that events that bring faculty and students together, such as research seminars, coffees, discussion groups, etc. are very important to a student sense of belonging and caring and that this translates directly into students staying in the program. In numerous studies, the credentials of students who leave and students who stay in graduate programs are identical; students frequently leave for other than academic or performance-based reasons. UCF retention studies show that our students rely heavily on their advisoradvisers for guidance in both degree requirements and in navigating the administrative structure of the university. The content of this section of the handbook will provide an excellent resource for advising students.

Advisement and mentoring becomes even more critical if your program is a thesis or dissertation based program with students engaged in independent research. Often the most profound education that our students receive comes from the research guidance and the relationship offered by their faculty mentors. However we must remember that for the most part, few faculty members ever receive formal training in mentoring students and thus it is incumbent on the program director and department chair to ensure that new and junior faculty members receive appropriate guidance in advising and mentoring students. This is one reason why less experienced faculty members should first be nominated and appointed to the graduate faculty as associate members until they acquire some additional experience in mentoring students.

Creating a Supportive Atmosphere in Your Program

Another aspect of graduate education that our studies show is extremely important but often overlooked is the intellectual atmosphere within your program. Graduate students crave to become part of the community of scholars and program faculty can develop an intellectual atmosphere that not only challenges our students but boosts their confidence and pride in their program. Achieving an intellectual environment requires more than hours spent in laboratories; it requires the creation of opportunities for students and faculty members to interact with one another by exchanging and debating ideas in seminars, symposia, and journal clubs. Exposing students to different perspectives than those currently found in your program by hosting visiting scholars/faculty and outside speakers and allowing your graduate students to meet and interact with them is important to their development. Graduate students are junior colleagues rather than just students or employees.

Creating an intellectual environment does not necessarily cost a large amount of money, but it does require a commitment and expectation on the part of faculty that they will participate. It is interesting that retention studies have found that almost all faculty agreed that this environment was desirable and necessary to nourish our students but many programs provide few formal opportunities for their faculty and students. Those of our programs that do promote this environment appear to have better retention of their students. Perhaps one of the most important contributions that you can make to create an intellectual and supportive environment in your program is to promote research seminars, symposia, and journal clubs in your program.

Student Rights and Responsibilities

One of the most serious situations for faculty occurs when a student seeks to leave an adviser’s laboratory for another advisoradviser, or leave the program in favor of another program. This scenario creates a classic conflict between a student’s responsibility to his adviser or program who may have invested time and money in the student and the right of a student to seek a change. The overwhelming majority of students do not seek such changes lightly and usually are quite fearful of being ostracized by other faculty in the department. They are also fearful of losing considerable time that they have already invested in the program. Often the adviser may be caught completely unaware by the request for change since many students are very reluctant to openly express their dissatisfaction to their adviser, and thus understandably the adviser may feel betrayed and upset with the student. The best thing for both the student and faculty member is to try to seek reconciliation if possible but assist the student in finding another advisoradviser if reconciliation is not possible.

Student Expectations vs. Reality

Unless students have considerable experience in research and prior graduate work they often enter your program with lofty expectations. There is nothing wrong with this, and in fact it is desirable, unless the reality of your program falls short of their expectations. Students expect to be challenged intellectually and most expect to work harder in their graduate programs than in their undergraduate programs. Usually students do well in their formal courses since they are long accustomed to structured lectures and tests. But most have never experienced “independent learning and exploration” which is a cornerstone of graduate education and thus have little knowledge of the laborious nature of solid research whether it is library, field, or bench research. They have never anticipated the hours of toil and frustration that are often required before they experience success. Unfortunately in many cases the reality undermines their lofty expectations and unless we build a support structure to help them weather their disappointment we will lose many bright students. This is not just symptomatic of UCF but is found throughout society which may explain the large number of people who identify themselves as “ABD’s” (All But Dissertation) as if the ABD is a legitimate degree.

Some of us may ask ‘why should we expend effort on those who cannot survive?’ as if graduate education is a Darwinian experience where only the fittest can survive. And, truthfully, there are some students who in spite of our best admissions criteria are not equipped to complete a graduate degree and enter a discipline. UCF retention research shows that the vast majority of students who leave doctoral programs had the same entering credentials as those who stay. About 50-60% of students in our doctoral programs have considered leaving; there are many who are in danger of leaving but possess the ability to be accomplished scholars and could thrive with the appropriate guidance. These are the students about which we are concerned, and therefore the real question is ‘how do we as graduate faculty members build a support structure for our students so that their expectations can be reconciled with reality and still maintain their drive and enthusiasm?’ Part of the answer lies in the environment mentioned in a section above. Our students must be fully assimilated into the program and given the opportunity to build support networks with other students and faculty through interaction in seminars etc. Another part of the answer lies in our curriculum in that we must offer challenging courses in a timely manner and introduce our students to research early in the program so that they can appreciate the reality of research. Finally, we as faculty members must be aware that graduate students are entrusting their future to us. Therefore, we must honor this trust by being diligent in offering guidance, truthful but measured in our criticism, and encouraging in our manner, because in the end, the accomplishments of our graduates will clearly reflect on the quality of the training and education that we have provided.