Ph.D. Student Resources

General Expectations for Graduate Students

A few quick notes on responsibilities for lab members (especially graduate students!):

• We are broadly a 9-5 shop in terms of when you're expected to be in the physical office (especially during the Fall and Spring).

• "Dress code" is student casual, unless you're teaching or giving a presentation, in which case I recommend business casual.

• You're expected to help both your fellow graduate and undergraduate students out! You are not expected to actually write code for them. If you feel like you're being taken advantage of, or undergraduates are eating huge parts of your time, please talk to me.

• You are expected to attend the weekly lab meeting - let me know if you can't make it.

• You are expected to share our compute resources in a collegial way.

• You will broadly seek to ensure that everyone involved in your dissertation chapters is recognized as a co-author: if an undergraduate is helping you collect data, they should be listed.

• I generally ask that I am a last author on your publications, and where possible a corresponding author (mostly as my email is likely to last longer than the student ones!). You should expect to be first author on the papers you are leading. I recommend that, if you have any questions about authorship or ordering, you ask early and often.

• Scientific replicability is critical. Everything you do should be clearly documented, from data ingest pipelines to final statistical outputs. It should be public, on github, in most cases.

Passing your Qualifiers & Achieving ABD Status

Every student in the lab has to go through a qualifier in which you will have a limited amount of time (generally around 3 hours) to complete a written exam, write a prospectus for your dissertation, and defense your prospectus in an oral defense.  Most students will start writing their prospectus in the Summer or Fall of their second year, with the goal of defending in the Spring.  You'll be taking significant coursework in your first two years to prepare you for your qualifier, including a writing course designed to ensure you're on-track for your prospectus.

Once you've passed your qualifiers, you become "All-But-Dissertation", or ABD (sometimes referred to as a "research graduate").  There are a few things that are helpful to know about what this means:

1. You can get a job if you want.  Ph.D. programs don't pay well - especially in our field!  Once you've passed your qualifier, it's relatively common for students to find full-time employment and complete the Ph.D. in a part-time mode.  This obviously takes longer (generally 5-7 years), but may be effective for you.  If you are interested in taking this route, please don't hesitate to chat with me.

2. You're going to be working very independently. Most of a Ph.D. is learning how to learn, which is different for everyone.  I'm here to advise you in you in your Ph.D., but at this point you're going to be learning alongside me in a sub-specialization that you're interested in.  Our goal will be to get you published in strong journals so you can defend, and it's a goal we'll be working on together. 

3. Motivation will be up to you. At this point, I won't be swooping in to ensure you're motivated to work on your dissertation (I'll be more focused on any grant deliverables we might have!).  Pushing your dissertation forward is going to predominantly fall on your shoulders, and ensuring you know how to motivate yourself (and those around you) on interesting topics is a big part of earning a Ph.D.!

4. You'll probably start to run into some compute limitations. Before your qualifier, you'll have run a lot of models, but most likely these will be smaller-scope than what you'll want for your dissertation.  You'll want to be good friends with the employees that feed and care for the High Performance Computing infrastructure!

5. Taking courses will become very rare. It's unlikely you'll be participating in much structured learning after you pass your qualifiers, so take full advantage of available courses before you pass your qualifiers.  There are some financial implications if you do opt to take courses after you achieve ABD.

Dissertation Expectations & Resources

These notes are mostly big-picture thoughts about preparing and writing a dissertation in the geoLab. Broadly, I expect that Ph.D. students will take the initiative to design and implement their own doctoral research, working iteratively with me and the lab to refine your ideas. Consider me a partner in your dissertation - I can give you advise, but I can't tell you on a week-by-week basis the things you need to do to finish your degree.

Are you ready to defend? Check if you meet these criteria, and if you think you do come talk to me:

1. At least one (preferably two) of the articles which appear in your dissertation have already been published, with you as a first author. If one is still under review, that's generally OK. I highly encourage co-authors on all of your works, but it is critical that you are the primary leader of your doctoral work.

2. At least two of your papers are substantive (i.e., showing a new application using satellite imagery, or innovating a new deep learning technique). In some cases, one of your papers may be more engineering oriented (i.e., you created a new software tool, and write an article describing it's implementation and use).

3. Your papers were the result of ideas that were originated and implemented by you (...though hopefully also inter-related with other activities in the lab). If you have questions about this, ask me! I do not expect you to originate entire projects, and broadly expect you will contribute to ongoing activities in the lab as a part of your dissertation.

4. You've shown you can work with a team - either by working with undergraduates to collect data, or co-authoring pieces with me or other students/staff in the lab.

5. You have presented pieces of your work to at least one (preferably more) external audience.

6. You have identified 2 internal (W&M, in addition to me) and 1 external individual who will serve on your commitee, and received at least a verbal commitment.

Other Resources:

1) www.overleaf.com - A wonderful LaTeX typesetting program. If you're in the geoLab, we'll probably pay for your subscription - just ask!

2) A LaTeX template for your dissertation: https://github.com/yishanhe/WM-AS-thesis-latex-template