Doctoral advising: A case study of a 3-year doctoral program's recipe for success

Abstract

Most studies concerning doctoral advising look at the high attrition rates of the programs, but rarely look at the student-advisor relationship. This study looks at the roles and responsibilities of the doctoral advisor as well as strategies for making the student-advisor relationship more positive. Doctoral advisors are expected to manage a variety of tasks including: keeping the student to a timeline, guiding the development of the student's research topic, providing guidance for the writing process, managing the student's dissertation committee, fostering the student's intellectual development, aiding the student with problems and challenges, and mentoring the student to become a scholar in the academic field. To add to the challenge, doctoral advisors at many academic institutions perform all of these functions with little to no guidance or training beyond their own experiences of being advised. Fourteen themes and eight best practices for doctoral advising were identified in this study.