University Affairs

Funnily enough, despite the decades I spent as a student, it has been the informal mentoring that I’ve received from my colleagues and supervisors that has helped me to become the kind of graduate student supervisor that I am today… a good one, I hope. FS taught me to be passionate, RB taught me to enjoy my student’s ideas, MM taught me to bring together the best in the field so that we can mentor each student as a team. But today I want to talk about just one of the many intangible, valuable things that I’ve learned from one of my all-time favourite mentors… let’s call her “LF” (you know who you are).

LF is one of the most important leaders in her field. She has quite literally shifted paradigms. Her research group is extremely prolific and publishes in the best journals in our field. But get this: she hangs out with her grad students at lunch. Every day! For an hour! When I first started to collaborate with LF, starry-eyed from meeting the author of my favourite papers, this is what blew me away. She is a leader in her field, but still makes this kind of commitment to spend time with her students. As I worked in her lab, it quickly became clear that this informal activity has been notably influential in the success of her students.

This daily, unstructured availability of LF to her students has numerous positive consequences. Naturally, there are daily informal, pleasant discussions about everything from where to go camping, to music and literature. This helps students to realize that university professors are human, and don’t need to be intimidating in order to be helpful guides on the road to discovery. But these lunches are also opportunities for unstructured academic discussions. Students who need help or want to bounce ideas off other people get timely feedback, and everyone learns what constructive criticism and the challenging of ideas looks like, in a non-threatening environment. You just can’t schedule this stuff.

I’ve come to think of this as the “driving your teenager to band practice” method of supervision. No, wait, hang in there … I’ll explain. If you sit your kids down to a formal dinner once a month, you can’t expect to find out the truth about their inner lives. The way you find out what’s really going on is when … you got it… you drive them and their friends to band practice. Then you’re just hanging out in the front seat, minding your own business, and eavesdropping. The truth comes out: who likes who, which teachers suck, and which parties are going to be “awesome” (adult translation: “trouble”).

It’s kind of the same with supervising graduate students. You need to be there, on a regular basis, so that you build trust, students relax around you as you become less intimidating, and you are there when they need you … not a week later, at 3:30 p.m., for half an hour. Does this take a real and meaningful time commitment? Absolutely. But it makes a real and meaningful difference to the success of students, too. And when students are successful, we all are.

• Have you been communicating your research to audiences beyond your discipline or even beyond academia?
• Have you been communicating your research using new media?

If so, you may be wondering: How do your put these things on your CV?

This problem arises for academics at all career stages: from graduate students to full professors. Whether you are applying for a job, a promotion, or a grant, you need to give an account of what you have been doing in ways that make sense to those reading your documents.

Wider impact is increasingly important. But we don’t yet have a way of including knowledge mobilization activities in academic CVs.

Not that academics haven’t been doing these activities for a while. I’ve actually met academics who have admitted that they’ve never really thought of these activities as relevant to their academic CV, so they just leave them off. That’s not going to work if you need evidence that you can communicate beyond the narrow circle of your own (piece of the) discipline.

Have clear categories for your research outputs
It is not unusual to divide your the publications section of your CV into sub-sections, like

• monographs
• peer reviewed journal articles
• other peer reviewed publications
• other publications

Once your “other publications” category seems like it contains things that are not really similar, you may start to feel uncomfortable.

It is also hard to know what to do with things that are not publications. Is sitting on an advisory committee to the Ministry of Education considered service work? Even if you are there because of your research expertise and your contributions to discussions communicate research evidence to policy makers?

A lot of people would list this under service but if you are there for research expertise and that is how you communicate your research knowledge to those policy makers, then I would suggest it is a research contribution, albeit not in the same category as peer reviewed publications.

The organizing principle is the audience
Peer reviewed journal articles and research monographs have as their primary audience other academics. Edited collections and some of your non-peer reviewed output also primarily address other academics. You’ll have a few categories for publications that speak to this primary audience.

Then you have “other research contributions” (as SSHRC application instructions suggest). Categorize these under meaningful headings, too. Options include:

• Research reports
• Articles in trade publications
• Articles or interviews in mainstream media
• Advisory activity

Or, you might consider grouping activities that address a particular audience: practitioners, policy makers and the general public are very different kinds of audience.

Do the same for conference presentations. This category is very meaningful as a subset of research communication to academic audiences.

Clear communication
Your goal is to communicate your accomplishments clearly. Communication is a two-way process. Know what your audience cares about and make it easy for them to find the information they seek.

Do not stretch the truth. You are not “padding” your CV. You are simply communicating your activities in reaching wider audiences with your research. Be honest with yourself about what activities do that.

By finding a way to communicate your accomplishments clearly you are contributing to the process of deciding appropriate formats and giving value to this type of work.

Tax season always seems like a good time to talk about money. Regarding money, career advice tends to range from “do what you love and the money will follow” variety to “get a practical degree and earn good money.” Money is extremely useful at paying for stuff, and sometimes life or health circumstances mean that financial stability and benefits are, at least for the time being, more critical to your overall happiness than finding satisfaction through your work.

That said, I’m making a plea for setting assumed income levels aside during an initial career exploration. That’s partly because the high-income clients I’ve worked with seem to have felt boxed in by their income. They’ve sought out career advising because they don’t like what they do, but they’ve often acquired so many fixed expenses that they feel they can’t afford even a temporary drop in income to pursue another career direction. It’s also because many people rule out general career directions based on false assumptions about the potential income associated with different jobs.

So, when you’re thinking about career options and potential income:

• Know what you actually spend right now, how much of it is fixed, and how much is discretionary
• Know how much you want to have at your disposal; the meaning of “just enough to live comfortably” differs radically from individual to individual
• When considering typical salaries for a career, also consider the typical income earned per hour; that management consulting position might not pay as much as you think, when you consider its hourly wage

Should you be considering an otherwise unappealing career because the pay is good, give your plan some serious thought. I’ve seen people pursue careers they don’t plan on enjoying, because they think they can buy enough enjoyment in the hours outside of work to compensate for the 9 to 5 misery. The problem with most high-paying jobs, however, is that the 9 to 5 is typically more like 8 to 6 or 7 so, no matter how that money is spent, the bulk of time is still spent in an unsatisfying job.

If you’re determined to try a path that’s likely to be both high-paying and unsatisfactory anyway, here are some tips:

• A job you hate is better than a career trajectory you hate, so make sure you have a clear transition plan in place to move from your hated job to a more enjoyable job
• Attach dates to each step of your transition plan
• Don’t let your expenses grow with your paycheque; keep your fixed expenses low, so that you retain the flexibility to change careers
• Meet with a career counsellor before you commit to your path, both to review the career decision-making process and to have someone who isn’t personally invested in your decisions act as a sounding board

And keep in mind that, in careers, personal satisfaction and financial stability needn’t be mutually exclusive. If none of the options you’re aware of meet both criteria, a visit to your university’s career office may be time well spent.

In October, I wrote about the stress of applying for the renewal of my NSERC Discovery grant and assured all of our regular readers that I would report back to you once the results of the competition were in. I said that the tri-councils remind me of Fluffy, from Harry Potter … you know, a guardian watchdog … with three heads and fangs.

Happily, I can report that my grant was, indeed, renewed. In fact, the amount of my grant was substantially increased. This makes me very happy … not in the least because I don’t have to go through the ordeal of reapplying for another five years. Frankly, I think my husband was almost as happy about it as I was; he had to put up with an awful lot of late work nights and probably a fair bit of grumpiness, while I was writing my proposal. Neither of us wanted to go through that again any time soon.

According to NSERC’s results, there were a lot of happy profs in Canada the first week of April. The success rate that they published is a lot higher than rumours had me expecting. According to NSERC, renewal rates for Discovery grant holders were a remarkable 78%, while 62% of first-time applications were approved. Thirty-six percent of proposals from established researchers who did not already hold a Discovery grant were also approved.

What these numbers cannot tell us is who was funded and who was not. There is a perception among faculty at teaching-intensive universities that their research programs are biased against and thus undermined, by Discovery grant criteria that favour large programs with many graduate students. I don’t have the details to know if this is true, but the new criteria certainly emphasize development of highly qualified personnel and the grapevine suggests that PhD candidates are preferred. Most importantly, the new criteria indicate that no proposal will be funded if they are considered “insufficient” in any category, so a small research program might not be funded even if the proposal itself is excellent. This could certainly be a problem for departments with smaller graduate programs.

This could bias unfunded research programs because Discovery grants really are unlike any other kind of grant. I can use it for anything that I know will improve my teaching or research and thus it is incredibly valuable to my program. For example, in an era when the vast majority of species conservation funding goes towards recovery of species at risk, I can choose to use my NSERC dollars to research on the conservation of species that are declining but not yet listed by the Species At Risk Act, or spaces that are at risk … both topics that are much harder to find funding to study. My Discovery grant helps me attract other funding, which lets my Discovery grant go a lot further. I can fund travel that enhances collaboration networks, students without scholarships and those inevitable cost overruns when gas jumps 13 cents a litre in one night. The freedom provided by my Discovery grant is unparalleled.

The problem is that any research program would benefit from these characteristics. Indeed, a smaller research program might suffer more from unanticipated cost overruns and might have less access to funding to pay publication charges for some prestigious journals. So it is a pity that researchers who used to be able to fund a small research program using Discovery grant funds can no longer do so.

I am happy to hear that many applicants were successful this year and I am particularly happy that I was one of them. I know my Discovery grant will greatly help the success of my program. I just wish that my colleagues with smaller research programs could share the wealth too.

References play a crucial role at all stages of your academic career. They will be considered in your application for a PhD program, in applications for doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships, and in academic job applications. (The role they play in a non-academic job search may be very different.)

Obviously you want referees who will say great things about your work and your potential. There are also some expectations about who you will list as referees. Not having those people can send as strong a message as having a not-very-supportive letter.

The foundation of a good reference is a solid professional relationship with the referee. It is not enough that they have read and liked what you have written or presented. Ideally they should be familiar with your work habits and your intellectual interests and abilities more generally. At least one of your referees should be someone with whom you have discussed your career goals and how different aspects of your work contribute to those.

Your dissertation supervisor is one of the expected referees. In addition to having read your work, your supervisor knows whether you keep your commitments (e.g. to submit work), how you respond to criticism and advice, and how much revision goes into the finished work others see. They also have a sense of the depth and breadth of your intellectual interests even if most of those have not developed into publicly presented work. Some advisors will be more proactive in providing career advice and mentoring, but you should seek their advice and support early.

Build and maintain relationships with others who might provide references. You don’t need to see them frequently, but there should be ways to maintain contact. Seek advice relevant to their area of expertise. Let them know about conference presentations or papers you are submitting. Ask if they would like you to send copies.

If you have chosen a referee specifically for their knowledge of your teaching abilities, give them an opportunity to observe your teaching and give constructive feedback. Don’t wait until you urgently need a reference letter. Build this kind of relationship with professors you TA for. If they aren’t willing to mentor your development as a teacher, they are unlikely to be a good referee for this aspect of your work.

As you progress in your career, you will want to bring in new referrees. Build these relationships so that you are in a position to ask for references when you need them. These relationships may start with meeting at a conference, or even in a job interview. A sense that someone really liked your work is a signal to expand your network to include that person. Once a solid relationship is developed, you may ask them to provide a reference when you need one.

Never list someone as a referee without requesting their permission. (Here are tips on how to ask). You should also inform your referees of every application on which they are named and offer to provide them with relevant material.

As long as job search books advise job seekers to sell themselves, job seekers will struggle where to draw the line between honesty and embellishment.

Jo VanEvery neatly addresses the topic of honesty on CVs. In particular, she points out the danger of falsely implying that publications are peer reviewed, or that articles have been accepted for publication, if the truth is otherwise.

Every now and then, I hear someone claim that “everyone” lies on resumés and cover letters. And that may leave you wondering whether you need to exaggerate in order to compete against people who are embellishing their job search documents. If a lie doesn’t get caught during the application or interview process, though, it can catch up with applicants after the fact. People who get caught lying about their qualifications and experience can find themselves unemployed and working against a newly tarnished reputation.

But I want to address a circumstance in which you don’t have to fess up. If you’re a parent, potential employers generally do not need to know.  Employers can’t legally ask you whether you have children (or whether you’re married, what your sexual orientation is, what your ethnicity is, and more).

Sometimes, it’s tempting to disclose this information anyway. For example, interviewers sometimes ask interviewees about their greatest accomplishment, and I’ve met some people who talked about becoming a parent. If you offer parenthood as an example in a job interview, you’re giving employers information they shouldn’t have access to, and you’re quite possibly overlooking examples that might be just as or more relevant to the work you’re applying for.  Not only that, but you may well be picking an example that doesn’t distinguish you from other interviewees.

Does it always necessarily harm applicants to disclose that they’ve had children? No. There may be situations in which it’s clearly relevant (for example, if you have a publications gap that you want to address in your academic job search). You may know for certain that the organization as a whole and all the interviewers and decision makers in the hiring process are family-friendly.

Even then, it’s useful to draw a line between what you’d say in a personal setting, and what you say in the professional context of the job search.

A woman I recently interviewed about her academic job search is glad she informed the committee that she’s a parent, but also feels she could have put tighter limits on what she shared:

“I would be less candid about my feelings about being a new mother – be it fatigue or maternal pride and happiness. To talk with candor about parenting still appears to be at odds with the cherished or cultivated persona of the successful and ultra-dedicated professor.”

So, when considering what to disclose, consider whether the employer is legally entitled to ask for the information, whether it’s relevant to the job, and how much information is right for your audience.

Usually I try to find the humour in my academic experiences, but today isn’t one of those days. Today I am talking about plagiarism, and there isn’t one thing that’s funny about that.

I am still shocked that I must deal with plagiarism at the graduate school level. I have put in place a number of procedures to reduce this problem (which I’ll outline at the end of this post), and they have reduced the rate of occurrences. As professors we have an important role to play in educating students about plagiarism. And of course, preventing plagiarism is beneficial to us, too, because I assure you… dealing with a plagiarism accusation is awful.

Because my student’s assignments are generally in essay form, the type of plagiarism I usually deal with is when portions of someone else’s writing is embedded in a document written by a student. There are generally two reasons that students plagiarize in this way.

The first is that they don’t really realize that it is wrong, and what the consequences are. Even though this reflects a minority of students, there are some students who got through their undergrads by copying out sections of other people’s papers into their own work. Never underestimate the possibility that a small number of your students have slipped through the cracks and truly never been taught how to write an essay, cite a paper, or paraphrase a reference.

The second reason that students plagiarize is that they think they will get a higher mark by doing so. Interestingly, it is not only weak students who plagiarize for this reason; sometimes it is the high achievers, who may also have high anxiety about failure.

As there are a number of reasons for plagiarizing, one would imagine that there should be a number of approaches for dealing with the problem. However, at our university, we have been informed that we are not permitted to deal with accusations of plagiarism at the departmental level, and that all cases must be reported to the faculty dean.

While it is appropriate to deal with all cases firmly and swiftly, I fear that dealing with it only at the faculty level will reduce our ability to refine our response towards students who we know well, on an individual level.

Nonetheless, at this point we must do the only thing that we really still have control over: stop plagiarism before it happens. Unfortunately, I think that most of us assume that at a senior level, all students know that plagiarism is wrong. I don’t think this is the case. More importantly, if you aren’t sure that the student standing pitifully before you in your office doesn’t know, it’s difficult to take a hard line on plagiarism. The only way to feel justified in following through with serious consequences is if one is positive that the student knew what kind of behaviour was academically appropriate prior to the plagiarism occurrence.

One step that I take every year to avoid this uncertainty is to devote 30 minutes of the first class of each course to teaching students about plagiarism and proper citations. We talk about how to cite paraphrases and quotations, what paraphrasing is, and how to paraphrase. Many students really don’t know that they can’t just change a few words of a sentence and then imply that it is their own work. Should they have learned that before they got to my class? Of course. But that doesn’t mean that they have. This is one of the few cases in which I teach to the lowest common denominator in my class, because it is essential that every student knows how to paraphrase and how to cite their works. If I take that time in my first class, then no student has any excuse to claim that they didn’t know how to write or paraphrase, if plagiarism accusations come up later.

And the truth is, there are more grey areas than you would think. Why is it ok to use the same proposal for two scholarship applications, but it isn’t ok to use the same essay as a thesis chapter, and in a course? Why is it ok to use your professor’s words in a grant application that is co-authored with a professor, but not in a scholarship application that is for the same project? Why is it ok to insert a figure from another source (if it is in the public domain, and properly cited) into a manuscript, but it’s not ok to edit the same figure and then insert it into the manuscript, even if it’s still cited? There are genuine subtleties to the issue of plagiarism. At the very least, students can be taught to be aware of them, and who they can go to when they have questions.

The second approach our department takes is to require all students to attend a lecture on copyright laws and/or plagiarism in their first or second year. Again, this allows us to be certain that students have been taught what is expected of them, so they can’t argue that mistakes have been inadvertent.

Further, copyright laws are changing quickly, and to be honest, they aren’t always logical (e.g., you can photocopy and distribute up to 20 percent of a book, or one chapter that is no more than 10 percent of a book? Who would guess that without being taught it?). There’s a pretty high chance that even the student’s supervisor doesn’t know about all the copyright rules they are supposed to follow. So it’s very helpful to make sure that the students themselves are kept up to date on current rules and guidelines. We are training them for a career, and in any career, they need to be aware of intellectual property rights.

And one last point: If students hear professors complaining about how they can’t distribute class notes that have graphs inserted in them… as many of us have been made aware of in recent years… it’s going to be harder to convince students that they can’t take someone else’s work and insert it into their papers. Profs need to take a serious line on plagiarism and copyright laws, and if we expect students to follow regulations, we need to do the same thing. Remember that our motivations for integrating other people’s works into our teaching may be the same as student’s reasons for plagiarizing. Some professors might genuinely not know that they are not permitted to distribute an “entire work” (e.g. a figure, table, photograph) to students without written permission. Some professors might want to do so because they want to do a better job in teaching students than they could do without that insertion. Copyright law in Canada doesn’t permit this, even with proper citation.

So profs need to be educated about copyright law, students need to be educated about plagiarism, and we all need to follow regulations that ultimately protect the academic rights and intellectual property of other people.

Recently seen on Twitter…

Question for my Followers: Should job talks be listed on your CV as “Invited Lectures.” I say “no”. Others say “yes”. What do you think?

— Stephen T Casper (@TheNeuroTimes) March 6, 2012

The following day, a similar tweet

Protip: if it’s submitted, under consideration, or revised and resubmitted IT’S NOT FORTHCOMING.

— Stephen Ross (@GhostProf) March 7, 2012

Peers will know
When submitting your CV for an academic position, you are being adjudicated by more experienced peers in your discipline. They know the journals. They know which conferences are actually peer reviewed and which conferences have a process for selecting presenters based on abstracts (which is not peer review, in case you were wondering).

They know that junior scholars without secure positions are only very rarely invited to give seminars. They know what time of year on-campus job interviews happen. If they are hiring, they probably know who else in your field is hiring, too.

They know that the book review section in a journal is highly unlikely to be peer reviewed.

Assuming that they won’t notice these things suggests that you don’t respect their judgement. It is never a good idea to insult the people who can give you a job, even implicitly.

One misrepresented item puts your whole CV in question
If the search committee notices one of these types of misrepresentation, you also throw everything else on your CV into question.

Maybe they aren’t familiar with one of the journals or presses where you have published. Now it will be assumed to be not that good. And anything that just says “forthcoming” with no date or issue number, will now be assumed to be “submitted” rather than accepted or in press.

It makes it look like you aren’t really committed to scholarship.
There are good reasons the search committee is interested in your publication record. They care about publishing research in high-impact journals because that is how you influence scholarship in your field. As things like impact on non-academic audiences become more important, your peers are developing criteria for evaluating your ability to do that.

If you stretch the truth, it suggests that you don’t really care about peer reviewed publications, being influential enough in your field to be invited to speak, etc. That suggests you are not only not the best, you are probably not even interested in being the best. I’m pretty sure that’s not the effect you were going for.

An honest account of your work
The committee will also want to know that you have work in various stages of preparation. This is important evidence that you will continue to publish, perhaps even in better journals. Don’t mix that work-in-preparation with the work that’s actually out (or almost out).

You need to accept that your best might not get you the job. The level of competition is very high. You need to do your best work and then let the committee do its best work of making a decision.

Career planning isn’t always just career planning. Completing grad studies and launching a career often seem to coincide with planning or launching a family.

The challenge of trying to figure out whether to privilege family or career goals was raised by academic mothers I interviewed for an upcoming UA print article. The interviewees shared with me far more information than would fit in that 750-word article.

One of those interviewees is Dr. Tracy Penny Light, an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo. She has two children, two years apart in age. The first was born the month she started her PhD, which didn’t exactly set her on the fast track to completing her degree and starting her academic job search.

That said, she did finish her degree and land a professorship, while raising young children with her spouse. Here’s her story.

Timing matters

Because Dr. Light gave birth almost immediately after starting her PhD, she didn’t qualify for mat leave. Instead, she took one term off, but would have had more time, had she been eligible for parental leave.

Money matters

Because of that term off, Dr. Light didn’t have grades available when funding applications were due. So, time and money became mutually compounding concerns. As she states, “When you have kids, there are extra expenses, and as a graduate student, you don’t make a tonne of money.” With external funding and mat leave financial support unavailable, Dr. Light took an unconventional approach to financing and scheduling her studies: “When my TA support ran out, I worked full-time for four years” in university administration, and switched to part-time PhD studies. While this led to late-night writing sessions, it also led to financial stability.

The roadblocks she ran into — no mat leave, no early external funding, part-time studies alongside full-time work — might suggest that families and academic careers are oil and water. But Dr. Light feels that having children early in her graduate studies was useful in the long run. As she points out, “When you’re in a tenure track position, you’re on the clock to get certain things done. If you’ve just had a baby, it can be much more constraining” than if your children are older.

Much as having a child one month into doctoral studies might seem like a career derailer, it meant that Dr. Light could spend those crucial pre-tenure years preparing her application package rather than battling chronic sleep deprivation.

While Dr. Light’s story might come with the sort of fine print you’d expect on a weight loss commercial (“results may be atypical”!), it also offers widely applicable suggestions:

• Timing matters — but even seemingly awkward timing can be turned to your advantage
• Be willing to explore alternate funding methods for grad school

Her final words speak to needed changes in workplace culture: “For men and women, we need to be more accepting of the fact that parenting duties aren’t an excuse,” but a legitimate part of the lives of working parents.

Academic advisers (supervisors) and graduate students have different goals for the student’s graduate school careers. While students may be focused on completing a degree and gaining enough knowledge and experience that they can get a job, most advisers expect that at least one of the benefits of supervising students is the opportunity to publish more papers. Sometimes these divergent goals do not intersect sufficiently that both the student and adviser get what they want from their partnership.

It can be surprisingly difficult to convince students that handing in the final version of their thesis is not, in fact, the end of their research responsibilities; that in fact, in some ways it is the beginning of the most important part … communicating their results to the world outside the three or four committee members who have participated in their research path so far.

While most students continuing in academia have a strong incentive to publish their research, many students who don’t plan to take an academic career path do not realize the importance of publishing. However, academic publications can make a CV stand out from the crowd, demonstrate that a thesis was of high quality, suggest that the author can write and communicate well, and demonstrate that graduates can follow through with responsibilities.

These are a few suggestions for encouraging them to take that final step to publish:

1) Set the stage

When (or before) my students start their research program, I make it clear that I expect them to publish their research in a peer-reviewed academic journal. I also remind them that a lot of their schooling costs are being covered by taxpayers, and they have a social responsibility to make their results accessible to the public. These arguments might not actually make them publish their theses, but at least they should feel guilty about it if they don’t.

2) Make it easy

Many thesis formats are very different from journal manuscript formats. However, a “sandwich thesis” style, in which one or more journal articles is/are sandwiched between an introduction and conclusion chapter, makes it much easier for students to extract and submit a portion of their thesis following (or prior to) their defense. As a bonus, committee members who review unpublished chapters will provide feedback on the actual manuscript, hopefully increasing its quality prior to submission.

3) Give them a warning

Academics are used to the rigor and criticisms inherent in academic publishing, but most students are shocked at the intensity and sometimes aggression of reviews. Every time a student submits a manuscript, I explain the experiences that they are likely to encounter throughout the process. Usually, students are still surprised by the amount of work required throughout the revision process. If they don’t realize that extensive revisions are a normal part of the publication process, many students are likely to give up after they receive comments on their first draft.

4) Do your share

There’s not much point in harassing students to provide you with manuscript drafts if they are just going to sit in your inbox for three or four weeks before you get a chance to read them. Getting comments and edits back to graduates in a timely fashion helps to create a culture in which both formal and informal deadlines are taken seriously. This is particularly important with graduate students, who may have had few hard deadlines over their most recent few years.

5) Stalk them

Ok, maybe you shouldn’t actually stalk former students (is it considered stalking if you leave “I know where you live and I provide your references” sticky notes on their desks?). But some of them might need gentle reminders that they haven’t actually completed their research until they’ve published it.