One of the bigger jobs of the autumn is done! I have given all students a dissertation topic and supervisor. And it was less hard than it was last year. We had considerably fewer students! And that really matters. And next year, the cohort will be bigger again, but by that time we hopefully have a few more staff.
The biggest hiccups this year were, I suppose, firstly that just when I wanted to start the process I got an email from a colleague. She said she had handed in her resignation, so she would be gone by the time the students would start their projects. That was a bit of a bummer! Her projects are always very popular. I could still offer her topics, though; we have one man who is scientifically close enough to her to be able to supervise all her projects. That saved me having to ask all the students who had chosen her projects to submit a new round of choices.
Secondly; another colleague had let me know she would be offshore during a crucial part of the semester. So she couldn’t have dissertation students either. And I forgot! So I had to quickly redistribute her students.
We also had five members of research staff willing to supervise students. I never give them many because they only do it out of the goodness of their hearts, but it is nice to be able to have that room to manoeuvre.
In the end I managed to spread the students out rather well. The person with the most students is the man who is basically standing in for our leaving colleague as well as being himself. He didn't mind having seven students. Everybody else has four, five, or six. That is a lot more relaxed than last year when many of us had nine!
Monday morning I will release the list to the students. I hope they like it! If so I think it will be a good year for dissertations…
 |
| Most popular topic: the influence of ecotourism on cetaceans (Pic by Ivo Kruusamägi) |
No comments:
Post a Comment