<p>Hey, </p>
<p>Has anyone here had any experience with a professor who stole/tried to steal your work?</p>
<p>I haven't had any personal experience, but I've heard horror stories. If this is happening to you, I would talk to a professor in the department that you trust to see what the next logical step to take would be...</p>
<p>No such experience for me, I have a great supervisor (and the rest of the department is great and honest too). I've had second/third-hand accounts horror stories of the kind. But I've had first-hand account of bad relationship with supervisors, not involving stealing of research.</p>
<p>It happens. It happened to me. My work wasn't stolen, but my major professor was notorious for putting her name on our work when it was ours start to finish. I didn't mind this if she helped me get started or through any part of the process. She would ask me what I was working on, scan it, and then expect her name to be submitted along with mine. This happened on about 2 or three of my publications. I just got over it. She's a powerful person in my field and it wasn't worth it to alienate myself from her.</p>
<p>Wow. I had a professor virtually steal my work, and have always wondered whether it happened to other people.</p>
<p>Even though I knew one of the art instructors at my school had a reputation for saying unprofessional things in class and a bad attitude, I asked her if she would take me on as an independent study student just because I admired her work so much. She told me to bring in some of my artwork so she could evaluate it. When I showed it to her she became upset for reasons that remain a mystery to me, and trashed everything I had brought - the words I remember were "trite;" "looks like what everyone else is doing these days" (not true; it was a technical process I'd developed myself); and "I don't know how you managed to get it shown in galleries." Despite being obnoxious and insulting to a surreal degree, however, she carefully examined each piece to see how it was constructed. I was shocked. I've never seen any other professor (or other adult) behave this way, and I didn't know what to say - so I just left her office without saying anything.</p>
<p>Two years later I happened to be at the university and picked up a brochure for arts and cultural events on campus. Some of the pictures inside were of faculty art and craftwork, including pieces done by that instructor which were almost identical to the ones I had shown her. I seethed about it for a while, but eventually decided I should just let it go since art isn't the field I'm pursuing as a career. Thinking about her still irritates me, though.</p>
<p>I was wondering if its true that the school bassically owns your work in grad school.I always hear "if you make a major breakthrough keep it to yourself". I was under the impression any work you do pretty much belongs to the school as long as they are paying your stipend and tution.</p>
<p>oh no ucsdpoli, your ideas are your intellectual property and you can take action against the professor if you so wish. however, most people don't because of things that some people here have experienced: their professors are powerful people in the field, no time to see it through, etc.</p>
<p>what happened to me is that i wrote a paper on latin american colonial literature, and my professor told me that, if in 2 years if I don't publish it, he will take it. i was afraid to say anything because 1. his wife is my boss, 2. i wanted to pass his class without being afraid of retribution, 3. i wanted to not have any problems in my department, i just wanted to graduate</p>
<p>i talked to one professor in my department that i trust and she said, "what do you think graduate seminars are? they are feeding grounds for research for the professors."</p>
<p>that whole experience launched me into an existential funk.</p>
<p>my advice is that, unless you have a professor that you know and you trust, don't write excellent works of art for your classes. just get the grade, write down your idea somewhere else, and wait until you graduate.</p>
<p>Oh my God, MaryCeleste. I'm really sorry that happened to you :( . Now I'm a bit wary of entering college...I'll just keep this in mind. Meu, thanks for the advice...wow this is kind of alarming to me. Hahah, I guess I'm a little naive.</p>
<p>My graduate program (PhD level) actually required students to sign a letter giving the university full rights to anything the student may invent (it even covered intellectual property issues) while they are acting as graduate students. In effect, you sign a waiver that gives the unversity full patent rights. It's amazing to see how many grad student's spouses and significant others come up with brilliant products and technology solutions:)</p>
<p>not me personally - but two of people i know did</p>
<p>one person made some compounds which her professor proceeded to grab and give so someone else to do some research on - upon which event those people published a paper and did not include her in it though it took her time and effort to make these chemicals - professor said he "forgot" she made'em - he's really an eccentric kind of guy, so who knows if that's what really happened ... but it shows that he really did not value her as a memeber of his groups much to just "forget" what's she has been doing there</p>
<p>another person worked at a carbohydrate lab - he was an undergrad then, but he really put in a lot of effort for 2 years of his life and synthesized many compounds - the professor not only did not include him in any publications but also benefited materially from selling these products to various other labs - at least he got great synthetic experience from that lab which helped him in graduate school</p>
<p>another case i've heard of is when professor told someone to hand over their PhD work to someone else - he threatened a graduate student to hand his PhD work to a woman who shortly left for the USA - the poor guy made another PhD under the same professor but it took him well into his 30s - he could not do anything about it because the whole institution was corrupt and his professor was a very influential scientist in a country where law was not generally upheld (in this and other matters) and networking was as essential as oxygen for young scientists</p>