Using this Directory:

• Find an advisor's scientific pedigree: Who did they do their graduate work with?

• Look up their webpage in their chemistry department website. Assess the site according to the criteria in Department Profiles.
• How does an advisor's profile fit in with the rest of the faculty?
• Have they moved from another university? Are they making a career change from industry?

• Is their research area in an emerging or traditional area of chemistry?
• Are they young faculty starting out, are they at mid-career, or are they senior faculty?

A Literature Search:

• Use SciFinder Scholar to do an author search to find recent and past publications of an advisor.
• Note the areas of research they have engaged in.
• Identify any collaborators: Are they other academics? Are they industrial partners? Are they researchers from specialized institutes?
• Plot the cumulative number of publications with time as far back as their earliest publication. Are there any periods of growth? Are there any periods of decline? Can you correlate these periods with the research areas they were engaged in?
• Look up representative papers and assess if the research areas interest you. Make a conscious effort to discover what it is that makes you interested in that advisor's work.
• Assess if the research areas are marketable today.
• What is the writing style of the papers? Is it written for people in the field or for a wider audience of chemists?
• Ascertain if they are innovators or followers in a field. Is their present work in the same area as their graduate and post-doctoral work?
• Read the acknowlegements section of their papers to identify their funding sources.
• Do author searches on former students and post-docs to investigate their career outcomes.

• Look up their funding track record from the NSERC website (from 1991 to present only).
• Look up their record of CIC awards from the CIC website. How prestigious are these awards? Read the citations in the Canadian Chemical News (ACCN).
• Find out if an advisor is a member of an editorial board of a research journal.

Theses:

• Look up copies of past student theses from the university library.

Primary Questions:

• What and who influenced them to become professors of chemistry?
• Investigate their circle of personal connections within the department the advisor is in. Is their spouse an employee in the department or the university?
• Investigate their circle of personal connections elsewhere in Canada.

• Who are their research collaborators? Are they from academia? Are they from industry?

• Who are their research rivals and competitors? Investigate the nature of these situations.
• Do they have present or past personal conflicts with other faculty members within the department? What about other departments in Canada, elsewhere? Assess if these are still outstanding or if they have been resolved.
• Did they have conflicts with any of their graduate students or post-docs? Again, assess if these are still outstanding or if they have been resolved.
• Capitalize on opportunities to hear an advisor give lectures on their work at conferences or within the department, and also undergraduate and graduate course lectures.

• Does the advisor keep records of the career outcomes of past graduates and post-docs including full contact addresses?
• Ask about the career outcomes of recent and past graduate students from the advisor's research group. Did they end up getting academic positions? Did they end up getting industrial positions? Find out the names of those companies and do Internet searches on them to discover the nature of their business. Look for common characteristics among successful students and post-docs from a group. This gives you an idea of who an advisor supports in their career paths.
• Ask them to relate to you success stories about past and current group members.
• Ask about the demography of past and present group members. Are they foreign students or post-docs? What cultural background do group members come from? How are the students and post-docs funded?
• Talk with current group members to verify for yourself how the group runs, how they view their research and advisor, what their career goals are, what is their level of awareness of strategies in pursuing chemistry careers, and the character of the group.
• What awards have past group members received?
• How long do students take to complete their degrees from their group? Investigate any cases outside normal time limits.

• Will you be involved in a project that is a new area for the advisor? Will you be involved in a project that is a follow-up or continuation of previous work done by past group members? This will bear on the level of innovation you can bring to the research and on the kind of recommendation letters you will receive.
• Does the advisor allow students and post-docs to pursue their own research ideas all the way to independent publication in research journals? How much mentoring or apprenticeship does the advisor do?
• How is a student's project chosen? Do they have to prepare a proposal? How much freedom do you have as a student? What about post-docs, are they treated differently in doing their research?
• Does their research involve specialized equipment? Is this equipment homemade or is it available commercially? Correlate this with the length of time students complete their degrees.
• Investigate and assess the reliance on instrumentation and equipment for carrying out research projects. Is there new equipment to setup? Is equipment maintenance involved? Is there shared equipment? (Link this with group size.) How is scheduling made for shared equipment? Are instructions readily available for training new users? Are there standard sets of experiments devised to calibrate and test equipment? You don't want to be working with a "black box" instrument that you have no way of checking the reliability of experimental results on new projects. You want to be as self-sufficient as possible.
• How much computer knowledge is required in the day-to-day running of the laboratory?

• Visit their laboratory to investigate its physical state. This is your opportunity to find out how "hands on" a research advisor is.
• Investigate the conference involvement of students and post-docs from the advisor's group?

• Will you be given an opportunity to give "invited" undergraduate lectures for courses the advisor teaches?

• How "hands-on" are they in the running of their group? How often do students and post-docs report back to the advisor on their research progress? Are short summary reports required?

• When was the last time they did an experiment in the laboratory themselves?

• How are group meetings organized? Investigate the format. This will give you clues about how important they regard oral communication and problem solving skills.
• Is there a hierarchy of graduate students? Of post-docs? Who is in charge of what in the lab?

Questions About Pursuing Careers in Academia:

• Ask about their experiences in pursuing a faculty position. What stories do they have to tell you that can help you in your quest for an academic position?
• What awards have they received in recognition of their research work? Have they received any awards highlighting their teaching skills?
• How do they view the tension between teaching and research? Do they believe there is a tension? Ask about their "teaching philosophy". Assess if their stated view is consistent with what you know from current and past members and the information you have gathered about the advisor.
• From the department office ask about their teaching evaluations for undergraduate and graduate courses. The department's record keeping will indicate how much the department values the teaching component of a professor's job.
• Have they held administrative positions within the department such as chair of the department, chair of undergraduate studies, chair of graduate studies, faculty advisor to student chemistry societies?
• Have they been involved in search committees for hiring new faculty members? Ask them how a faculty search is conducted, what constitutes an application for a faculty position, what criteria they look for in their assessments.
• Do they hold active positions in the Chemical Institute of Canada? Investigate the nature of their involvement or non-involvement.
• Ask to read a previously funded grant proposal. How much were they asking for? What was the nature of the research? How does it rank with what you know to be important or relevant today?
• Find out the acceptance rate of their proposals; that is, what fraction of the proposals they write actually get accepted and funded.
• Does the research lend itself to applications of commercial value or is it basic research?
• Do they still maintain any connection with past group members who were successful in getting academic positions?
• Ask who were the external examiners for the oral defenses of previous Ph.D. students. These people are usually good candidates to choose from as future post-doctoral advisors if you were to join that particular research group as a graduate student. They may be research collaborators of the current Ph.D. advisor and they more than likely know each other personally.

Questions About Pursuing Careers in Industry:

• What is the advisor's level of knowledge of the chemical industry? How does their research work fit it in with current trends in the chemical industry? How does their research work fit it in with current trends in academic research?
• Do they have connections with industry? Are they funded by industry? Correlate these with the career outcomes of past group members and your own background checks. Are these industrial connections relics from their previous graduate and post-doc advisors?
• If they have strong connections with industry partners assess their knowledge of patent law and market trends in the industrial sector they are involved with.
• Have they consulted for a company? Have they been asked as expert witnesses in patent disputes?
• Have they had past conflicts with industry partners? Assess if these are still outstanding or if they have been resolved.
• What business skills do they have? Assess these with their management style in running their group.
• Do they have any patents?
• Do they have titles such as "Company X Chair"?
• Has their research been marketed?
• Have they started companies from their research efforts?
• Do they sit on company boards?
• Ask them about the skills required for pursuing a career in industry. How are they different from those required for a career in academia? What skills are common?
• Do they still maintain any connection with past group members who were successful in getting industrial positions?
• Do they have any written confidentiality agreements with the companies they collaborate with?

• Are these industrial partners consistent with the ones mentioned in the acknowledgements of their published papers?
• How many papers have they published in the literature that had to do with research in collaboration with industry? How much freedom do they have in publishing?

SUMMARY:

The main theme is to look for consistencies in all your investigations about an advisor and their group. Try to quantify all risk factors. The key point is that you don't want to be in a situation for which you did not anticipate.

The responsibility for your career success rests ultimately on you. Your advisor, when well chosen, can greatly facilitate this goal. It is also in their best interest to do so for it enhances their fame in the scientific community. Your success is a reflection of their success and vice versa. Note that every graduate student has a narrow window of opportunity to succeed in landing an academic or industrial position. For securing academic positions this is an important factor to consider since "rising stars" are sought after primarily.

Be aware of the primary goals of every academic: (1) to be recognized for their contributions to a field of study (this is a self-serving goal); (2) to propagate and perpetuate those contributions to the next generation of scientists (this is a nobler non-self-serving goal). What better way to accomplish these goals than by directly influencing the lives of their own students. It is the second goal that affirms the importance of a researcher's work and ideas and guarantees that they will continue to influence a field well into the future. Remember that the best measure of an advisor's success is how much their students and post-doctoral fellows are sought after in the scientific community both in academia and industry.

Copyright: © Dr. John Andraos, 2001

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