Advisor–Advisee Expectations

This document explains what you can expect from me and what I expect from you. For PhD students, the UGA Doctoral Charter provides the formal framework for the rights and responsibilities of doctoral candidates and supervisors.

1. Mutual Respect and Professionalism.

Everyone should expect professional behaviour and mutual respect, regardless of seniority, background, identity, or scientific disagreement. Communication must remain polite and constructive. People’s time and boundaries must be respected, and disagreements must be kept focused on the work.

These expectations apply equally to PhD students, post-docs and myself. Personal attacks, intimidation, aggressive communication, repeated pressure, harassment, discrimination, and retaliation are unacceptable. See Professional Communication and Mutual Respect for detailed guidelines and institutional resources.

2. What you can expect from me

You can expect me to:

  • engage seriously with your research;
  • provide scientific guidance and candid feedback;
  • help identify important questions and diagnose difficult problems;
  • make reasonable time for regular supervision;
  • discuss research and career decisions with you;
  • give fair credit for your contributions;
  • support strong work through recommendations, introductions, and opportunities when appropriate;
  • treat you professionally and respectfully.

The level of scientific guidance I can provide depends in part on my expertise and research interest. I am happy for researchers to explore directions beyond my own work, but you should expect greater independence in areas where I have less expertise and interest. We may seek additional mentorship or collaboration when useful.

3. What I expect from you

3.1 Take ownership of your research

  1. Drive your projects forward and take responsibility for the work needed to do so. This includes learning the relevant literature and technical tools, developing and testing ideas, implementing and debugging your work, documenting it properly, and following through on agreed actions.

  2. Ask for help when you are genuinely blocked, after making a serious attempt to understand and solve the problem yourself. If I point you to a method, paper, or area of literature, investigate it seriously. If you think it does not apply, identify the obstacle as precisely as you can and communicate those clearly.

  3. You are responsible for everything you produce and share, including material created with the help of LLMs or other tools. You should understand it, check it carefully, and be able to defend the substantive choices it contains. See Responsible Research Practice and Use of LLMs for detailed guidelines.

3.2 Take feedback seriously

  1. Take the time to understand feedback before responding. I will aim to provide substantive and professional feedback directed at the work. This takes time and attention, and I expect it to be treated with the same care in return.

  2. Feedback should normally be acted on. If something is unclear, ask for clarification. If you have a substantive reason to take a different approach, engage with the concern behind the suggestion and explain your reasoning clearly. Strong disagreement is welcome when it is supported by evidence or technical arguments.

  3. Approach feedback with curiosity and focus the discussion on improving the current version of the work. If you see things differently, explain your reasoning and evidence; context about past choices is useful when it helps us decide what to do next.

Further reading: Stanford — Working with Your Graduate Advisor, MIT — Setting Advising Expectations, and the European Commission’s ResearchComp framework.

3.3 Come prepared and follow through

Come to meetings prepared to explain:

  • what you have done since we last discussed the project;
  • what you learned and tried;
  • what worked and what did not;
  • what remains unclear;
  • the questions on which you need input;
  • what you plan to do next.

You do not need positive results for a meeting to be useful. A carefully investigated failure or a well-formulated question can lead to a productive discussion.

Follow through on agreed actions and professional commitments. Keep track of your own deadlines, doctoral requirements, training obligations, travel procedures, and other administrative responsibilities.

3.4 Contribute to the group

Participate seriously in group meetings and scientific discussions. Share useful knowledge, provide constructive feedback, help colleagues when appropriate, and follow through on commitments to collaborators, conferences, reviews, and group activities.

Postdoctoral researchers should also contribute scientific leadership, including mentoring more junior researchers when appropriate and helping shape collaborative research.

4. How we work together

4.1 Meetings and availability

  1. I am generally available online for quick questions, except during unplugged vacations. My own availability does not create an expectation that students or postdocs should be similarly available. There is no expectation to monitor or respond to messages outside normal working hours.

  2. I cannot provide continuous or on-demand supervision. Messages do not normally require an immediate response, and sending additional messages does not make a request more urgent.

  3. Give reasonable advance notice for recommendation letters, application feedback, manuscript reviews, and other time-sensitive requests. Include the deadline and the materials I need. I may not be able to accommodate last-minute requests.

4.2 Feedback on drafts

  1. The level of feedback I give depends on the maturity of the draft. On an early or difficult-to-follow draft, I will usually focus first on the main issues: structure, scientific argument, missing elements, and overall narrative. I may ask for a substantial revision before commenting in detail.

  2. Once the structure and argument are sufficiently clear, I can give more detailed feedback on individual sections, technical presentation, figures, wording, and exposition.

  3. Before sending a revised draft, remember that you are responsible for the version you share, including material produced with the help of LLMs. Read it carefully from beginning to end and address the higher-level comments throughout the document. I expect each new version to be substantially more mature than the previous one.

4.3 Co-supervision

  1. Co-supervision gives you access to different expertise, perspectives, and research styles. It can help broaden a project, expose weaknesses earlier, and give you more than one source of scientific guidance.

  2. Supervisors may sometimes have different scientific opinions. Make those differences explicit so that we can discuss them. Engage seriously with feedback from all supervisors, and avoid using one supervisor’s opinion simply to dismiss another’s. When advice conflicts, bring the issue to the supervisors and let us work through the scientific reasons together.

  3. For PhD students, the Individual Thesis Monitoring Committee (CSI) provides an independent setting to discuss progress and difficulties with supervision.

5. Projects, publications, and credit

5.1 Joining projects

  1. Focus on producing strong research. I cannot guarantee a particular number of publications, and I will not add someone to a project simply because they want another paper or need it for their CV.

  2. Participation in additional projects and collaborations depends on scientific fit, available capacity, demonstrated reliability and independence, previous contributions, professional conduct, and the ability to contribute meaningfully.

  3. Taking projects seriously, moving them forward, producing reliable work, and collaborating well builds trust. That trust influences the responsibilities, collaborations, and opportunities I can confidently offer.

5.2 Authorship and credit

  1. Be generous in recognizing contributions and allocating credit. Authorship should reflect meaningful contributions to the work, and contributions that do not warrant authorship should still be acknowledged appropriately. Discuss credit openly and revisit it as projects evolve.

  2. As a practical rule, I normally expect a co-author to have made significant contributions across more than one aspect of the work, such as formulating the research question; developing theory, methods, or software; designing or carrying out experiments or data collection; analysing and interpreting results; developing, checking, or substantially improving proofs and technical arguments; identifying conceptual or technical issues and helping resolve them; framing and positioning the contribution; writing or substantially revising the paper; or providing essential resources that enabled the work.

  3. Authors also take responsibility for the work. You should understand the parts for which you are responsible and contribute to checking the accuracy and integrity of the final paper.

For a broader discussion of the rights and responsibilities associated with authorship, see Don Kennedy’s essay on academic authorship and the CRediT Contributor Roles Taxonomy.

6 Career development

6.1 Your career is your responsibility

  1. I am happy to discuss career goals, applications, research positioning, conferences, collaborations, and opportunities in academia or industry. I can provide advice, introductions, recommendation letters, and other support when appropriate. These discussions are most useful when they focus on concrete questions, decisions, or plans.

  2. You remain responsible for your own career development and decisions. I cannot guarantee a job, internship, collaboration, publication record, conference trip, funding decision, or other career outcome.

  3. Uncertainty about future prospects is normal, but I cannot take responsibility for managing career anxiety or resolving it through additional publications, projects, collaborations, or opportunities. Career pressure should not be used to rush scientific decisions or submissions. Research decisions will be based on the quality and maturity of the work, scientific priorities, contribution, and available resources.

  4. If career-related stress becomes substantial, I encourage you to use appropriate career-development or wellbeing resources alongside discussions with me about concrete career questions.

6.2 Opportunities are not automatic

  1. Career goals do not create an entitlement to particular opportunities. If you believe that a project, collaboration, conference, or other opportunity is important for your development, explain why and make the case clearly.

  2. Decisions will still depend on scientific relevance, contribution, available resources, group priorities, and the applicable approval process.

  3. Once a decision has been made, respect it and use the appropriate process if you want it reconsidered. Repeated pressure on supervisors or colleagues to obtain a different outcome is not appropriate.

6.3 Recommendations depend on experience

  1. Recommendation letters must reflect my actual experience working with you. I can give a strong recommendation when I have confidence in your scientific ability, independence, judgment, reliability, contribution, and professional conduct.

  2. If I do not feel able to provide a strong and honest recommendation, I will tell you.

  3. Scientific disagreement does not count against you. Raising a concern in good faith or using an institutional complaint procedure will never be a reason to withhold support. What matters for professional recommendations is how you work, contribute, follow through, and interact with others.

7 When the advising relationship is not working

  1. If you feel that the advising relationship is not working well, raise the issue early so that we can try to understand what is not working and whether it can be improved.

  2. If there is a fundamental mismatch in research interests, working style, or expectations, we may need to discuss other options with the relevant people and institutions.

  3. If you are uncomfortable raising the issue directly with me, you can also seek advice through appropriate institutional channels. For PhD students, the Individual Thesis Monitoring Committee (CSI) provides an independent setting to discuss progress and difficulties with supervision.