Lost funding, transfer or wait it out?

Graduate School
1

<p>So I have been in a top 10 PhD program in Materials Science and Engineering for about a year now. I have done very well, both academically and research wise, and recently passed my qualification exam. Unfortunately, about a month ago my adviser told myself and a few other students that the grant that was supporting our PhDs had been canceled and we would need to find alternative sources of funding for the fall semester. I am interested in NEMS and came here to do this this specific project, but there are very few other faculty members here actually working in the field. I have talked to all of them, but none are planning on taking new students this year leaving me with 2 options: transfer to a different university or sit around and hope a grant will come through that will allow someone here to hire me. </p>

<p>My research was not specifically on the grant and was simply covered under the general forward technology towards this cause clause so it is not a result of poor research on my part that the grant was canceled mid-contract. </p>

<p>Unfortunately, my adviser seems adamant on trying to keep me around and is offering short term projects until he can figure something out, but he is not interested in pursuing NEMS specific research. Also, he is in Electrical Engineering, so he is unable to get a grant for a materials-focused project and has expressed his disinterest in collaborating with a materials faculty member. If I had known this mentality prior to joining the group, I never would have taken the offer. </p>

<p>Nonetheless, I am left in a sticky situation. My adviser has not offered any help in facilitating me leaving the group and my department is trying to keep me around as well. This makes it very difficult to find honest advice. </p>

<p>So what should I do? Stay and try to find a new adviser here, or give up and risk having to retake a year of classes and my qualifier to start fresh somewhere else? If I decide to transfer, is there an easy way to get started without burning another year in the application process? I have been trying to contact faculty members directly, but thus far have gotten few responses.</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

2

<p>You say that your adviser and your department is trying to keep you around. What kinds of things are they doing to “try” to keep you around? Are they offering a funding package that’s sufficient to support you? Are they giving you options of research projects you can work on? This is directed more at your department than you, but IMO “trying” is not having a couple of half-hearted conversations about how much they would like you to say. Really trying is finding work for you to do and making sure that you are supported financially and academically in doing that work.</p>

<p>I would talk to your Director of Graduate Studies and ask point blank what your options are. Can you work for a professor in a different department who does NEMS research while completing the academic requirements in your own? I know that your advisor is not interested in collaborating; is he at least interested in co-advising you? If not, is there another professor in your home department who could collaborate or co-advise you with another professor doing NEMS research? Are there departmental or university funds that you could get on that will be guaranteed until someone else can put you on their grant?</p>

<p>If your department (advisor, or DGS, or someone) can’t give you concrete answers to these questions or at least some indication that they are seriously trying to arrange things for you, then I would look elsewhere. There’s no use sitting around and hoping - even if someone submitted a perfect grant for you today, it could be next June before they actually have the money to support you, given grant resubmission and funding schedules. Moreover, it’s far better to leave after one year (and only have to retake one year of classes) than it is to pay for a semester or year for yourself, get into debt, and <em>still</em> have to leave and repeat <em>two</em> years of classes elsewhere.</p>

<p>* If I decide to transfer, is there an easy way to get started without burning another year in the application process?*</p>

<p>No, not really. Most likely, you will have to reapply, but you’ll be considered a little bit differently than if you weren’t in a program. You’ll have to contact PIs directly, explain your situation briefly, and ask them if they have a place for you in their lab/are interested in taking you on. Now may not be a good time, simply because many PIs are traveling. To be really honest, you may not be able to start elsewhere until January at the earliest, and more realistically next summer or early fall.</p>

3

<p>Similar to juillet I’m confused. </p>

<p>Is your advisor saying “You’ve lost funding in my group” This alone does not make sense. A top ten engineering program can financially spot a student who has passed quals for a semester or two with TAs. In the interim you could apply for external or internal fellowships or wait for your advisor to have new funding.</p>

<p>Is your advisor saying “I want you in my group. I will fund you, but you can’t study NEMS.” Stuff like this happens all the time in PhD programs. This is a more complicated case. As long as your advisor is proposing research to advance your degree in material science, and your advisor wants you in his/her group, usually you stay in the group. Almost never do you apply to a PhD program at another university.</p>

<p>I’d like to respond further, but it would be helpful if you would clarify.</p>

4

<p>Thanks for the responses!</p>

<p>While my adviser keeps proposing “options” none of them are leaving me feeling confidant. He seems to be trying to keep me in the group, and would like me to continue to study NEMS, but keeps telling me to “hold tight”. He brought me in to move his group into NEMS, but never had an actual grant specifying this as a goal…a mistake on my part, I know, but I didn’t know that was a question I had to ask. He has offered to support me on “short term” projects, while I try to do my real research on the side. This will require continually getting 6-9 month contracts for specific devices which will significantly impede progress towards my degree. He is very unwilling to collaborate…mistake 2 on my part…again, I didnt know this when I joined. This will make it very difficult to land an NSF-type funding for NEMS research and since there are currently no proposals in progress, and given the typical sub-10% success rate, it does not seem to be a smart gamble. </p>

<p>Fortunately, my department has offered to cover my stipend and tuition expenses through the end of the year in case I do not find a suitable match right away. This gives me time to find a good fit but also complicates my decision making. I have already spoken with 17 different faculty members here spanning materials, physics, chemistry, bioE, electrical, and mechanical. Of those, only 1 is definitely hiring, and 3 are waiting on grants (estimated response early Aug). The one that is hiring is a brand new faculty member that told me up front to expect to spend the next 12-18 months setting up his lab and building deposition tools. As someone who is already a year in, I am not looking to start over at year -1 and its not a great fit anyways. The others were unwilling to discuss the potential grants in great detail before they heard back. </p>

<p>Since my only real mechanism to find funding is to find PIs with grants, I have been contacting groups from all over the country. While an NSF fellowship or similar would be great, it is nowhere near reliable enough to bet my degree on. So far I have gotten a few favorable responses back, even some that would let me start research as soon as I can show up (they were unfamiliar with the academic portion of the transfer so could not comment on coursework/qualifier examinations). </p>

<p>The good news, all options are on the table…the bad news, all options are on the table…</p>

<p>Thanks again!</p>

5

<p>If all else fails, can you at least get a MSc (or MASc)? Many schools offer you the possibility to get a M(A)Sc if you pass the qualifier but leave afterward.</p>

6

<p>jgilini, this is an interesting thread. Usually, I would tell students in your situation to just stay with their advisor, but you actually have some good reasons to find another advisor. Your very legitimate concerns are no collaboration (my PhD project was very collaborative which really made it a better experience), temporary funding projects with no relation to your main research, and a mismatch between you and your advisor (He is EE, and you are material science). Also, you are early in your PhD career. You have just passed quals. If you are going to switch advisors, that is exactly the time to do it. </p>

<p>With all this being said, it might be that you are too focused on finding NEMs research. A major part of getting a PhD is just finding research to allow you to become and independent researcher. The research itself needs to be interesting and relevant to your background, but it not the right approach to go in and say “I must do NEMs” or “I must do this specific thing”. Also, I’m familiar with MEMS (micro instead of nano), and funding isn’t always easy to come by. I think it would even be harder to find NEMs grants.</p>

<p>Also, you need to be flexible on grants. Professors lose funding all the time. Students get put on many projects throughout their career. Some may not be relevant to their research. Even worse, students spend years on TAs. If, as a student, you have stable funding and your main research is moderately relevant to what you are being funded for, you should be very very happy. That is the best it will ever get. The important thing is to get the degree. If you make too big a deal out of this situation it will rub every potential professor you talk to the wrong way. You’re funded. That’s great. Just because the funding itself is not a perfect fit for your research is itself not a good reason to leave your advisor…If the funding your on is completely unrelated to your research, that is a different story though</p>

<p>I would discuss with you advisor and think through some of the legitimate concerns you expressed. Listen to what he/she has to say, and be very open minded. Keep a very positive relationship with your former advisor. Your will need his recommendation. Hope this helps.</p>

7

<p>Getting supported on short-term projects while you do the research that moves your degree progress forward “on the side” is not an acceptable solution, IMO. “On the side” work never gets the priority and time that it needs, and you could languish for a long time. And if he is unwilling to collaborate with another professor to advise you in the research you want to do, then IMO he does not want you badly enough as a student. It’s not worth your time to labor away on his projects when he’s basically telling you that he is not willing to give you the support you need to do the work you want to do. Personally, I would cross staying in his lab off my list of options.</p>

<p>By end of the year, do you mean the end of 2014 or the end of the 2014-2015 academic year? Either way, that is enough time for the 3 professors you are waiting to hear from to let you know what their grant situation looks like.</p>

<p>Personally, what I would do is wait until those PIs at your own university hear back about their grants in a month and a half. See what they say. But I would only choose to work with one of them if the project was really something I was interested in. Otherwise I would be looking to go to another more supportive department in which people were doing interesting work and had funding to support me.</p>

<p>*With all this being said, it might be that you are too focused on finding NEMs research. A major part of getting a PhD is just finding research to allow you to become and independent researcher. The research itself needs to be interesting and relevant to your background, but it not the right approach to go in and say “I must do NEMs” or “I must do this specific thing”. *</p>

<p>Well, I think that depends. While I generally agree that the purpose of a PhD is to become an independent researcher, I also think that you’re trying to develop a base/foundation upon which to build the early part of your research career. Materials science is not my field so I don’t know how specialized NEMS research is, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with a PhD student knowing that they want to do a specific type of research and refusing to do something outside of that broad area. For example, I came to my PhD program to do HIV prevention research, preferably with African American and Latino populations. I would’ve been okay but not very happy doing HIV prevention research with white populations. But I would’ve refused to stay in a lab that didn’t have any HIV prevention research going on, but said that I could work on obesity stuff and do the HIV prevention stuff on the side, in my own time. Getting a PhD is hard enough without working on something that is not interesting to you.</p>

<p>Also, you need to be flexible on grants. Professors lose funding all the time. Students get put on many projects throughout their career. Some may not be relevant to their research. Even worse, students spend years on TAs. If, as a student, you have stable funding and your main research is moderately relevant to what you are being funded for, you should be very very happy. That is the best it will ever get.</p>

<p>This isn’t necessarily true, either. I mean, professors do lose funding all the time, but a successful professor (especially at an R1) has either/both of 1) several streams of funding so they may be able to shuffle you from one to the other or 2) a network of colleagues that they can collaborate with and potentially put you on as a GRA to that grant. I was on funding during my entire PhD that was directly relevant to my research. It is quite possible to do that. I did have an NSF GRF in the middle so that was awesome, but the beginning of my PhD and the end were both NIH training grants. This last one is a NIDA-training grant and I do research on HIV and substance use prevention - perfect.</p>

<p>I don’t know…as someone coming to the end of my PhD journey (I defend in 3 weeks) I’m against the idea of a PhD student settling. You don’t HAVE to get this degree; it’s not required. You could do something else that would be fulfilling and pay well. So yeah, to a certain extent I do think that the PhD program and funding should be a near-perfect fit. Otherwise it’s simply not worth it. It’s not worth it to be miserable or unhappy for 6 years to do research you don’t want; it’s not worth it to form a foundation in a field you don’t intend to continue (only to have to basically start over in your postdoc); it’s not worth it have an advisor who doesn’t value the work you do and doesn’t seem willing to work with others to help make your program a near-perfect fit for you. Why do it?</p>

<p>I’ve had friends who have been put on grants that are not relevant to their own research and it’s never ideal. They spend a lot of time working on the project that they’re paid for, which means less time for their own research. One of two things happens: they switch their own focus to whatever they are a GRA for, or they extend their time to degree and/or the number of hours they work in a day trying to get both their own projects and the project they are paid for done. Not worth the hassle IMO.</p>

8

<p>juillet, we both agree that there are good reasons for this student to leave his/her group and advisor.</p>

<p>My issue on NEMS is that it is so specialized. For example saying “I am only interested in NEMs and not MEMs” would be like saying “I’ll only work on HIV for African American and Latino, but not white people”… to use your example. The guys statement just didn’t really make technical sense. A material Science engineer would be perfectly justified to work on either NEMs or MEMs. 80% of the skills can be transferred from one area to the other.</p>

<p>Not everybody can get an NSF GRF…less than 10% get it. My point is that if you are on a regular grant with a professor, not everything you do will be focused on advancing your degree…about 65% will. In my experience this is normal.</p>

9

<p>Thanks for the input. </p>

<p>At this point, staying in my current group is no longer an option. After a long conversation with my adviser, being as civil as possible, he gave me a ~4% chance of successfully landing a grant for me to do NEMS work and we will not know the outcome of that proposal until next spring. Waiting 8-10 months for a 4% seems unreasonable, especially to stay in a group where the adviser has proven his inability to have a two-way conversation on the topic. In a year, I have not gotten a single bit of technical advice from, and have more or less given up trying to keep him informed in my work as he has never once commented on it besides to say “I’m impressed”. …and its not like every experiment is a success… Even more frustrating is that when I seek outside help on my own, I get yelled at for sharing too much information.</p>

<p>Currently being in a MEMS group (where I am the only one studying NEMS), I can say for certain that I do not want to study MEMS. The length scales involved are large enough that continuum theory holds in almost all instances, leaving PhD students spending 80-90% of their time simulating devices. I am an experimentalist and having been in a computational group for a few months, cannot complete a computational heavy PhD and enjoy the experience. Studying NEMS is more akin to studying applied physics. It is often highly experimental, the goal is not to simply create a device with the highest Q (quality factor) possible, but to simply make a device that works and exploits a physical phenomenon and nonlinearities that are irrelevant at the MEMS scale. I would prefer to study pure physics or chemistry than switch to MEMS. </p>

<p>With this in mind, I spoke to the one person here who is actually studying NEMS. Unfortunately he is not hiring this upcoming year, but he could not recommend any faculty members at my current university for me. </p>

<p>While I have not closed any doors, and am going to talk to the department chair this week about the situation, I am focusing my efforts elsewhere. I have gotten some favorable responses from faculty members doing NEMS work elsewhere and am awaiting a response from admissions. Hopefully something can come of one of these opportunities.</p>

10

<p>

</p>

<p>Instead of 3 or 4 paragraphs trying to explain the difference between MEMs and NEMs, just say this when trying to find a new advisor. Everybody will understand this. Also, don’t completely blame your old advisor for the mismatch between you and your former group. Say on some level you changed and realized you wanted an experimental PhD.</p>

<p>I’d strongly recommend not focusing on you advisor’s inability to find funding as your reason to leave. At first glance nobody will understand why a student is leaving a MEMs group because the advisor can’t find NEMs funding.</p>

11

<p>Is there an experimental group in MEMs at your university? A top ten engineering school should have one. I’m not saying you should join it, just be aware another PI or Chair may ask you why you wouldn’t consider it, if the issue of your preference between computation versus experiment comes up.</p>

<p>Also, you need to know what type of people you are dealing with. I’m in an overlapping academic community as you. There are sincere well meaning PIs…no doubt. There are PIs that would fit well into Heisenberg’s role in Breaking Bad saying tread lightly…</p>

<p>A learning experience for me was to go to a bar with PIs, post-docs, and senoir PhD students at a conference. PIs sometimes do not have positive things to say about students who leave groups. They’ll say “he just wanted to go to a better ranked school”. I also heard PIs basically give and receive requests to blacklist students who try to switch around groups. This isn’t just switching groups within one university, it is between universities. I’m not saying this is fair, it isn’t. Just be aware, and be careful! </p>

12

<p>Yes, I am very aware that it is a very narrow political tight rope that I have to walk during the transition. I am still working very hard for my current adviser and remain on as good of terms as possible. He is not happy about considering leaving the group, but given that he does not have any funding for me, understands that I need to keep my options open. </p>

<p>I have spoken to almost 20 other faculty members at my university who could possibly be a fit for me. Unfortunately, they have all either already hired their students, are not looking to hire, or will not hear back on grants for a few months. Naturally some of those are not a great fit personality wise, or the projects are not a good fit, but I have made sure to speak to everyone that I know of here first. After all, I do not want to have to move and retake classes if possible. </p>

<p>I want to be clear that am not blaming my adviser for this situation. To my understanding it is completely tied to unstable government funding. My personal problems with my adviser lie independent to funding. Since I have experienced a computational group, I am always sure to mention that I am looking for an experimental-based PhD experience to potential advisers. </p>

<p>I have a few leads at other universities, hopefully something will come of one of them!</p>