PhD Advising & Mentoring
Each student in the program will work with a graduate adviser, a faculty adviser, and a major professor.
Faculty Adviser
The admissions committee identifies a primary and secondary adviser for each student. These faculty advisers agree, prior to admission, to take on the responsibility of assisting the student in meeting academic goals. Faculty advisers are Graduate Group members who have research interests compatible with those expressed by the student and whose primary responsibility it is to help students plan a program in the field of emphasis.
Dissertation Adviser/Major Professor
By the end of the second year in the program, the student should identify a potential dissertation adviser (often called a major professor) and work with that individual in preparing for the qualifying examination. Often the faculty adviser will become the dissertation adviser. At this point the dissertation adviser becomes the student's mentor and assumes the primary advising role.
For more information on applying to the program or to connect with a faculty adviser, send a message to phdeduadvising@ucdavis.edu.
PhD Mentoring Guidelines
Mentoring of graduate students by faculty is an integral part of the graduate experience. Faculty mentoring is broader than advising a student as to the program of study to fulfill coursework requirements and is distinct from formal instruction in a given discipline. Mentoring encompasses more than serving as a role model. The following mentoring roles have been outlined to guide the relationship between faculty and graduate students.
Faculty and graduate students must realize that, while the major professor will be the primary mentor during a student’s career at UCD, many of the mentoring “functions” defined below may be performed by program faculty other than the major professor. An important corollary to this recognition is that faculty members must realize that much of their interaction with all students has an important mentoring component to it. Graduate students also have responsibilities to ensure successful mentoring and these are also indicated below.
Faculty have a responsibility to mentor graduate students. Mentoring has been defined as follows:
• Guiding students through degree requirements.
• Guiding students through dissertation research.
• Guiding students through professional development.