This isn’t a question for me, it’s for a friend, but he doesn’t have an account here, so…
One of my friends was recently accepted into NC State’s history program for the Master’s track. He and his adviser were getting on great, but his adviser recently passed away in a car accident.
He’s not sure what to do at this point. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t drop him from the program over this, but is there something specific he should do? He said he was going to call the department tomorrow, but is there anything he needs to keep in mind, both when speaking to them and (possibly) picking a new adviser?
Not really sure how all that would work–any help is appreciated.
OK, this is a bad situation but for other, less tragic reasons it happens. The department will usually try to figure out what to do to help the student finish up with the least turmoil as possible. It happened both to me and my spouse and it worked out OK. Her M.S. advisor did not get tenure and left the university and my Ph.D. advisor died abruptly of a heart attack. In my case, one of the other professors took over nominally and sponsored my dissertation which I was pretty independent on anyway. The biggest problem for me was the fact that the funding was wound down in a short period and I really had no one to give me a strong recommendation for a post-doctoral position.
He needs to talk to the Director of Graduate Studies and/or whoever is the professor appointed to oversee the MA students in his department. One of these two people will give him some direction about what his next steps are and how to recruit another advisor to help him finish.