Supervision of research students: responding to student expectations

This paper is primarily intended to assist individual supervisors of research students to discern their students' expectations and to respond appropriately to these expectations. It is not intended to be prescriptive; issues are canvassed and possible approaches are suggested, but it is assumed that readers will formulate their own responses within their departmental and institutional constraints. The material in this paper is largely derived from my experience as inaugural Dean of the Graduate School at The Australian National University, Canberra (ANU), from 1990 to 1998. It is based mainly on comments made by individual PhD students in 150 confidential "exit interviews" conducted from 1994 to 1998 inclusive, and on matters raised in approximately 100 meetings requested throughout my term by graduate students from a variety of courses.Other activities involved in the role of Dean have also contributed, including regular meetings with the President and Council of the ANU graduate students' association, formal and informal meetings with students and staff from all of the University's Graduate Programs, 8 years as Chair of the University's Graduate Degrees Committee, and participation from 1991 to 1993 in a substantial study of PhD supervision at the ANU funded by the Australian government (ref.1). My views are inevitably influenced by my own experience in supervising research students in nuclear physics from 1961 to 1991, mainly at the ANU. Nevertheless, my Graduate School activities have provided a comprehensive overview of the concerns and expectations of research students from a wide variety of disciplines. I have also profited greatly from reading the now extensive literature on supervision, some of which is listed under "further reading". The structure of the paper is as follows: Section 2 describes some general approaches to the supervisory task, Section 3 discusses commonly expressed student expectations, Section 4 canvasses possible responses to these expectations, and, by way of epilogue,Section 5 considers some of the privileges and responsibilities inherent in supervising research students. The text includes numerous (anonymous) quotations from individual students. Although these reflect the ANU situation, I am sure that they represent the more or less universal experiences of research students

The Graduate Teaching Program: coordinator's report - 1995

November '96 marks the end of the two-year pilot stage of the Graduate Teaching Program(GTP). Four programs have now been trialled, each lasting a semester and each involving significant variation and experimentation in content and methods. As of November 1996, ninety ANU PhD student tutors and demonstrators have successfully completed a semester-long program of concurrent teaching and training, 56 of them Faculties-based scholars, 34 from the IAS (three of these CSIRO). All Faculties and all Research Schools and Centres have now participated in the scheme, and virtually every teaching Department (including the MBA Program) has had at least one tutor or demonstrator undertake the program. The two-year pilot scheme had three basic objectives: i. to test the level of demand among students and of support among staff for the introduction of a program of teaching support for graduate students; ii. to determine the kinds and level of support (the human and other resources) needed to mount an ongoing program of high quality; and iii. to explore different ways of designing and mounting such a program, with the eventual aim of settling on a model that best fitted ANU conditions

Professional doctorates: a discussion paper

In July 1995 the Law Faculty proposed to the Graduate Degrees Committee (GDC) that the University introduce an SJD degree (Doctor of Juridical Science). After a good deal of critical discussion the proposal was referred back to the Faculty for refinement. A revised proposal was approved by GDC in October 1996, by the Board of the Faculties in October, and by BIAS in November. It was finally accepted by Council in December 1996. During discussion at the Academic Boards and at Council, considerable uneasiness was expressed about the whole matter of "professional doctorates", and in particular that the standards of the ANU PhD might be undermined by the introduction of such degrees. The Boards requested, and Council noted, that GDC should prepare "a discussion paper on the general framework of professional doctorates". This paper has been prepared in response

A report on the Stopover Grants Scheme

The International Education Office (IEO) has the main responsibility at the ANU for the recruitment of international students, and in this it carries out the usual activities performed by most universities, including several major overseas missions each year. Some academic areas, such as the National Centre for Development Studies, also do their own direct overseas recruitment. Surveys undertaken over the past few years have emphasised the importance of personal contact in recruiting graduate students, particularly at the PhD level. Since 1991, all newly enrolling graduate students have been invited to complete a simple questionnaire indicating what factors they considered significant in their decision to come to ANU to do graduate study. The form used in 1996 is shown in attachment 1. A survey of this type has obvious limitations. For example, it gives no indication of why students choose not to come to the ANU. However, it does indicate the factors that influential for students who did come. For research students, ANU's reputation was significant for 72%. Otherwise, personal recommendation was the major factor (28% ANU staff, 45% staff of own institution, and 21% former ANU students), with 19% influenced by ANU promotional literature. For coursework students, ANU's reputation is less important (29%), personal recommendation is somewhat less significant than for research students (17%, 17% and 22%), while ANU promotional literature is a major factor (43%) These results indicate that it is important to facilitate personal contact and strategic distribution of literature. The stopover Grants scheme initiated at the suggestion of the then Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Terrell in 1993, does just that

Current issues in graduate education at the ANU

This paper discusses what I consider to be the major issues currently confronting the ANU in postgraduate education. The exercise was undertaken initially to help me sort out my own thinking. The paper is distributed in the hope that it might be similarly helpful to others and that it might help focus discussion within the University of future directions in graduate education. In general no attempt is made to provide detailed prescriptions by which the issues raised should be addressed

Probing the isovector transition strength of the low-lying nuclear excitations induced by inverse kinematics proton scattering

A compact approach based on the folding model is suggested for the determination of the isoscalar and isovector transition strengths of the low-lying ($\Delta S=\Delta T=0$) excitations induced by inelastic proton scattering measured with exotic beams. Our analysis of the recently measured inelastic $^{18,20}$O+p scattering data at $E_{\rm lab}=30$ and 43 MeV/nucleon has given for the first time an accurate estimate of the isoscalar $\beta_0$ and isovector $\beta_1$ deformation parameters (which cannot be determined from the (p,p') data alone by standard methods) for 2$^+_1$ and $3^-_1$ excited states in $^{18,20}$O. Quite strong isovector mixing was found in the 2$^+_1$ inelastic $^{20}$O+p scattering channel, where the strength of the isovector form factor $F_1$ (prototype of the Lane potential) corresponds to a $\beta_1$ value almost 3 times larger than $\beta_0$ and a ratio of nuclear transition matrix elements $M_n/M_p\simeq 4.2$.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Nuclear Octupole Correlations and the Enhancement of Atomic Time-Reversal Violation

We examine the time-reversal-violating nuclear ``Schiff moment'' that induces electric dipole moments in atoms. After presenting a self-contained derivation of the form of the Schiff operator, we show that the distribution of Schiff strength, an important ingredient in the ground-state Schiff moment, is very different from the electric-dipole-strength distribution, with the Schiff moment receiving no strength from the giant dipole resonance in the Goldhaber-Teller model. We then present shell-model calculations in light nuclei that confirm the negligible role of the dipole resonance and show the Schiff strength to be strongly correlated with low-lying octupole strength. Next, we turn to heavy nuclei, examining recent arguments for the strong enhancement of Schiff moments in octupole-deformed nuclei over that of 199Hg, for example. We concur that there is a significant enhancement while pointing to effects neglected in previous work (both in the octupole-deformed nuclides and 199Hg) that may reduce it somewhat, and emphasizing the need for microscopic calculations to resolve the issue. Finally, we show that static octupole deformation is not essential for the development of collective Schiff moments; nuclei with strong octupole vibrations have them as well, and some could be exploited by experiment.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures embedded in tex

Partial Dynamical Symmetry in the Symplectic Shell Model

We present an example of a partial dynamical symmetry (PDS) in an interacting fermion system and demonstrate the close relationship of the associated Hamiltonians with a realistic quadrupole-quadrupole interaction, thus shedding new light on this important interaction. Specifically, in the framework of the symplectic shell model of nuclei, we prove the existence of a family of fermionic Hamiltonians with partial SU(3) symmetry. We outline the construction process for the PDS eigenstates with good symmetry and give analytic expressions for the energies of these states and E2 transition strengths between them. Characteristics of both pure and mixed-symmetry PDS eigenstates are discussed and the resulting spectra and transition strengths are compared to those of real nuclei. The PDS concept is shown to be relevant to the description of prolate, oblate, as well as triaxially deformed nuclei. Similarities and differences between the fermion case and the previously established partial SU(3) symmetry in the Interacting Boson Model are considered.Comment: 9 figure

A report on the Graduate School (February 1993)

The Council of the ANU resolved in May 1988 to establish a Graduate School. On 11 May 1990 I was appointed as the first Dean of the Graduate School, for a period of 3 years in the first instance. Although from time to time I have talked about the Graduate School to various groups within the University, this is the first general report. It describes the processes leading to the establishment of the Graduate School, reports on the School's development and current operation, including centrally based initiatives and the Graduate Program system, and briefly considers some future possibilities for graduate education at the ANU. Many parts of this report are inevitably concerned with my own involvement and perspectives. Such parts are written in the first person; to do otherwise would be highly artificial. Unless indicated otherwise, all ANU statistics are extracted from official publications

The future balance of graduate and undergraduate students at the ANU

In July 1992 a specially convened joint meeting of Deans and Heads of Research Schools briefly considered the suggestion “that there is an increasingly pressing need for the formulation, at the highest level, of a clear policy on the balance of graduate and undergraduate students at the University”. The matter has since been discussed in various forums of the University, but no clearly defined goals have emerged. The present paper is written in an attempt to provide a definite focus for such discussions; it is not intended to be definite. Hitherto the University’s approach has apparently been simply to recruit as many graduate students as possible within the limitations of available supervisory capacity. In this spirit, one of the initial objectives of the Graduate School was enunciated as “to increase the number of graduate students at the University”