As an advisor to a team of PhD students as well as a smattering of undergraduate researchers and a PI on a few federal grants, meetings to mentor and manage make up a large portion of my time. Making sure those meetings are maximally productive for everyone involved is critical. That objective is hard to measure: what does it mean for a meeting to be maximally productive? How often should my students meet with me to maximize their benefit? How long should meetings be? What should students work on between meetings? And how can I be sure to be productive of my own time so that meetings don’t entirely consume my life, taking away from the time I also need to consider next steps?
This document gives an overview of how I, as a faculty mentor, think about when and how often my PhD students need to meet with me and what the substance of those meetings should be. While every student and their needs are different, my hope with this guide is to outline a set of principles rather than a set of hard-coded meeting policies, so that the resulting set of meeting practices is flexible to changes in circumstance.
My PhD students are both students and researchers: working to advance the forefront of human knowledge while also learning the skills necessary to do so. Meetings exist to help them along that path, to bring me up to speed about how their projects are going, and also make sure they and I come to a shared understanding of what we think are the best next steps. When I meet with a student, I am trying to determine if a student needs course correction: feedback from me to best guide them towards more productive learning or research progress.
With this in mind, I consider a meeting most worthwhile if: I have found that many students seem to believe that being stuck is a reason not to have a meeting, but in reality it’s quite the opposite. A student unable to make progress is often the best reason to have a meeting, so that we can work together towards a solution.
I have found that many students seem to believe that being stuck is a reason not to have a meeting, but in reality it’s quite the opposite. A student unable to make progress is often the best reason to have a meeting, so that we can work together towards a solution.
Even being able to clearly articulate a new problem is productive! Understanding that a problem exists and making an effort to write it down are important steps towards being able to solve it.
Even being able to clearly articulate a new problem is productive! Understanding that a problem exists and making an effort to write it down are important steps towards being able to solve it.
Notably, a consequence of this rather utilitarian list is that “good news” isn’t valued, since it doesn’t really help me to help the student. Of course, I’m a human person, and so collectively celebrating progress or good news can make a meeting worthwhile, even if it usually isn’t time-effective to have an entire meeting devoted to everything we hoped would work now works and I don’t need any guidance.
On the other side of the above equation is time: meetings have a cost for everyone involved and if meetings are not likely to prove useful, scheduling a meeting might be counterproductive. In short, students should typically not expect a meeting every day, as the meeting schedule then becomes burdensome. So how long should a student go between having a meeting?
Students, even newer researchers, are generally pretty good at determining when their progress has slowed or when they have problems that could use further discussion. Thus, this is usually the easiest sort of meeting to schedule and most students will reach out to me unprompted to check in with the aim of getting unstuck every couple of weeks. I generally trust my students to see this sort of hurdle and so leave it to them to schedule this sort of meeting.As I discuss in the next section, students won’t always notice when they are stuck and so I still recommend that they provide a short written weekly check in to ensure they aren’t missing an avenue to improve.
As I discuss in the next section, students won’t always notice when they are stuck and so I still recommend that they provide a short written weekly check in to ensure they aren’t missing an avenue to improve.
It is the tendency of most students to look at this question only through the lens of short term progress: Am I stuck right now? Do I know what task I’m working on next? However, it is just as important that meetings at least occasionally discuss the students overarching goals, including what projects they may want to work on next, the experiments they aim to conduct farther down the line, their graduation timeline, etc. In the absence of these discussions, most students will consider those questions only when necessary, and so it becomes more difficult to do much to change course.
As such, I ask that my students have a chat about their long-horizon objectives for at least 10–15 minutes every meeting, just so that they keep those in mind when thinking about their more immediate aims. I have found that this forces the students to think more broadly about the context in which their short-term goals exist and has led to a steady stream of aha moments where either I or the students realize there exist opportunities to spend a bit of effort now to preemptively advance these longer-term goals or to better align their short-term goals to advance the long-term ones. Though discussing long-term goals isn’t always how the students want to spend their time, I have seen these discussions result in compounding positive effects over time for the students that commit to thinking about them.
By definition, students cannot anticipate the unknown unknowns in their research. Meeting with their advisor is sometimes the only way that issues in their work will be discovered in advance of it becoming a significant problem. Short, written status updates between meetings can save considerable time.
Not every interaction between student and advisor should be an hour-long meeting!
Recently, I have been recommending that students who go more than a week without having an in-depth meeting provide me with a short written update of what they are working on and their progress. When I see something that I think requires following up, this becomes a trigger to have a meeting together to make sure we are on the same page and that no issue exists. This has proven a happy middle ground for everyone, since it means we don’t have to have as many meetings, but students don’t completely miss out on the benefits of chatting with me.
This is the part of the guide that I change most often and so I won’t include my exhaustive thoughts here.My lab’s meeting guide is available on Notion if you’d like to see my more comprehensive thoughts on the subject of meeting structure and preparation.
My lab’s meeting guide is available on Notion if you’d like to see my more comprehensive thoughts on the subject of meeting structure and preparation.
I require my students to prepare both the meeting agenda as well as putting together figures, updates, questions, etc. the evening before we meet and add it to our shared meeting space on Notion. This ensures that the student will have ample time to collect their thoughts and ensures that the meeting does not mostly consist of “oh, I forgot” items that significantly diminish productivity. In the morning before we meet, I’ll take a look at this document and add agenda items, my thoughts or insights, or questions for clarification. These additions help to make sure we don’t waste time and can be most productive.
Preparation in advance, mostly by the student by also by me, is essential for effective meetings. Absent preparation in advance, meetings tend to be unfocused and rambling. Relatedly, a clear agenda is a helpful starting point for a meeting, as it ensures that important topics are not missed.
Finally, meetings conclude with a discussion of long-term goals (as mentioned above) as well as goal setting for the next meeting. My student and I will end the meeting by establishing what they are working towards next and add a few stretch goals to the list for what else they might also try to make progress towards. During my preparation for subsequent meetings, I frequently review this list to ensure we are meeting our internal goals and, if we are falling behind, what we can do to improve or pivot.
Different students have different needs. Over the past few years—including the fully-remote COVID years—I have gone through a number of meeting styles, each with their own merits. Some students need the routine of regular meetings while other students might find them a distraction. At different stages of their research or level of experience, meetings may take on a different tone or even be entirely devoted to long-term goals or progress. This guide is just that: a guide. I am flexible with most students, particularly my more senior students, to let them take direction to structure meetings the way they feel most productive.
My general philosophy: try to meet fairly regularly, but always ensure that students check in even when a real-time meeting is not possible. Without these check-ins, progress will slow, as neither I nor the student see hidden opportunities to accelerate or course correct.
And if a student says they need your time, listen to them.