Transcript Diane Litman - CRA-W

2013 CRA-W
Graduate Cohort Workshop
Finding and Training
Your Advisor
Diane Litman
PROFESSOR
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPT
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
*Thanks to prior speakers for these slides and content.
Diane Litman
 Education
o MS/PhD: University of Rochester, 1986
o AB: College of William and Mary, 1980
 Positions
o 2001-present: University of Pittsburgh
o Computer Science Department (Associate/Full Professor)
o Intelligent Systems Program (Secondary Appointment, Past/Upcoming
Director)
o Learning Research and Development Center (Research/Senior Scientist)
o 1985-2001: AT&T Labs - Research (formerly Bell Laboratories)
o Artificial Intelligence Principles Research Department (Member of/Principal
Technical Staff)
o 1990-1992: Columbia University
o Computer Science Department (Assistant Professor)
 Service
o Chair (elected): North American Chapter of the Association for Computational
Linguistics, 2000-2001, 2002-2003
o Editorial Boards (current): Journal of AI Research, Transactions of the
Association for Computational Linguistics
o Member of many technical program committees
o Speaker: CRA-W Graduate Cohort, 2007
My Research Areas
 Speech and Language Processing
o Spoken Dialogue Systems
o Enabling Technologies
 Artificial Intelligence in Education
o Tutorial Dialogue
o Web-Enabled Peer Review
o Automated Essay Assessment
 Knowledge Representation and
Reasoning, Natural Language Learning,
and User Modeling
Advanced Degree == research
Need an Advisor/Mentor
 At some point in your graduate career, you need
to find a research adviser/mentor
 How do you do that? What is important about
the process and that choice?
What is a Research Advisor?
Learning to do research – Apprentice
relationship: Explains, shows and
helps you do research
 Find a research problem
 Get a proper background: literature,
skills at critical reading and
understanding
 Apprentice research -o
o
o
o
How to identify problems worthy of Ph.D
How to tackle problems
Organize and write papers & proposals
Give talks
What is a Mentor?
 A Mentor
o acts as advocate for your professional & personal
development as well as research
o develops and lasts over an extended period of time
o provides help, advice, contacts, and information
o provides encouragement and acts as advocate
 Research advisor may or may not be a
mentor
Need both , or more
 If advisor not a mentor, need to find one
– or more
 Could be in department or not
 Could be in research area but in
different university or industry
 Can have more than 1 mentor
 Finding a research advisor that is also a
mentor is ideal, but you can find a
mentor elsewhere!
Expectations from the combination
of advisor and mentor
Beyond research:
 Help build confidence – encouragement
 Helping with networking
o Conferences, workshops, email
 Helps prepare you for talks
 Helps prepare you for interviews
 Helps with funding
Finding an Advisor
 Two important components
o The research
o The personality
Doing a PhD is not easy
– It takes sustained work in an area
– There are many hurdles to get over
But the rewards are amazing!!!
 You need a research area/topic that you
truly enjoy and can have passion about
 You need an advisor that will help you
achieve your potential
Where are you now?
 Best case situation: you know what
research you want to do before you even
choose your school
 In this case: you don’t shop for a school,
you shop for an advisor
Don’t know your research area?
 You need to shop for one – but you should
consider advisor personalities as you do so
 How?
o
o
o
o
Take classes
Talk to professors
Do projects with professors
Talk to other students about the faculty
Finding/evaluating an advisor
 Is the person in a research area you like?
 Is the person’s work current and relevant?
Funded? Where published?
 How many students does she supervise?
 How long does it take students to finish?
 What is the placement of past students?
 Are students given responsibilities?
 How responsive is advisor?
o How long to return written materials?
o How accessible?
o How helpful?
Finding/evaluating an advisor
 How much freedom does the student have?
o Learn to do research – find problems
 Does the advisor publish with students? What
is the order of names?
 Who presents the papers that are co-authored?
 Does the person take students to conferences
and help with networking?
 Are the person’s work habits compatible with
own?
How to find out
 Look at faculty’s web page
 TALK to current and past students!
 Work on a small project with her/him
 Take a class from faculty member
Advisor/Student Relationship
 Not one size fits all!
 There needs to be a match for you
o What motivates you

Praise/criticism?
o What is your working style
Groups (what size) versus alone?
 Pressured or relaxed?
 One track or multi-task?
 Quiet or hustle and bustle?
 Regular meetings or on-demand?

Barriers to good mentoring
 Faculty member doesn’t have enough time to
devote to mentoring
o Being too busy is not acceptable
 Faculty member and student are in
competition with each other
 Faculty member and student lack personal
experience with people of different
backgrounds
 Trust/Respect is not there – different agenda
 Communication problems – listening
 Unrealistic expectations
Do and Don’ts
Do
 Listen and consider advice of adviser
 Talk to adviser if you have problem in research
 Make sure you are getting what you need from
an adviser
 Talk to adviser if not satisfied
 Make sure (mutual) expectations are clear
Don’t
 Criticize your adviser in public
 Get too involved personally with adviser –
including intimate relationship
It doesn’t always work out
 Sometimes an advisor/advisee don’t work out
together
 The earlier this can be identified, the better off
you are
 Be honest and open about any problems
 May need to simply find another advisor!
•
o Funding implications?
o Hard feeling? (hopefully not!)
Don’t bad mouth your advisor even if you
switch
Advisor/Mentors
 Advisors and Mentors – very special people in
your life. Relationship will have lasting effects
on your career and your life
 A mentor relationship(s) grow over time – and
may be found in unexpected places
 These are important relationships and having a
match is something that takes some thought.
Take the time to do it right!
 Thanks to others who came before me for the
deck of slides!!
o
o
o
o
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Chandra Krintz, 2012
Soha Hassoun, 2011
…
Mary Lou Soffa, 2007
.. And beyond..