THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING

Expectations about Advisory Committees

Author(s): Terry Ann Krulwich

1. Students don't consult their advisory committees (especially as a group) in part because they cannot be persuaded that the committee would ever "side with them against the preceptor" and they do not trust their committees to give them balanced, helpful advice. They also don't realize that they are best safeguarded against suboptimal progress and guidance by regular advisory contact and meeting.
2. Advisory committees sometimes shrink from their responsibilities in several key ways: (a) they don't make sure there are regular meetings with the entire committee; (b) they don't seriously review the choices that the student is making with respect to rotations--funding, productivity, available space, etc.--so that some students gravitate towards impossible or inappropriate situations; (c) they are sometimes timid about voicing and following through on reservations about the student's progress or likely progress on a project; (d) they or the preceptor may have serious criticisms of the way in which the student is functioning, but no one is willing to undertake the sensitive discussion with the student, risking an ultimate blow-up from pent-up unexpressed dissatisfaction.

The Scenario

Committee members: Gold, Gel, Lait have three advisees:

One of them is the student of Dr. Lait; that student (W) is proposing a set of experiments that Dr. Gel thinks are flawed in their design and possibly, in any event, addressing a problem that is too chancy and difficult for a student.

The second student (Daw) is a first year student who has read Prof. X's paragraph in an old Preceptors Book and has decided to rotate with him. At least two of the committee members have never heard of Prof. X, and the third vaguely remembers him as a modestly active investigator of limited recent productivity.

The third student (Day) is near the end of the dissertation in Dr. Gel's lab; he thinks he has completed all his work, but Dr. Gel thinks that there are many more experiments desirable for the thesis--since this is Dr. Gel's first student, he is anxious that the dissertation be impressive.

• How would the students like their committee to behave, in theory?
• How do you think they are likely to behave?
• What would be the best way(s) to behave?

by Terry Ann Krulwich, Dean of Graduate School

Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY

• Return to Problems and Standards in Research Ethics: Scenarios and Situations Common in Medical Schools

• Conflicting Priorities and Life Goals Among Members of a Lab

• Who Decides When a Student is Done?

National Academy of Engineering

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