G3.8 Graduate Advising
Advisor-Advisee Relationship: Roles, Selection and Expectations
All graduate students are assigned an advisor when they arrive in the department. The student and the advisor are responsible at all times for making their expectations clear to each other. Incoming MA candidates in Spanish will be assigned one of six advisors based on their declared field of interest, and each MA candidate in Portuguese shall confer with one general advisor.
The student and the advisor shall plan a program that takes into account the student’s interests, strengths and deficiencies. If, for example, the student has a strong undergraduate background in a particular period of literature, the advisor will not recommend further courses in the same field.
At the beginning of their studies in the department, doctoral candidates in Spanish literature or linguistics or Portuguese shall arrange their programs in consultation with graduate advisors representing their primary areas of concentration. Candidates may also, of course, seek advice and suggestions from other professors, but it is important to maintain frequent and ongoing contact with officially designated advisors. At the beginning of the second semester in residence the academic advisors and candidates shall make a detailed review of the first semester’s progress.
As soon as doctoral candidates begin to define an area of dissertation research, they are encouraged to designate as their official advisors the professors they expect to direct their dissertations. Once officially designated, these professors shall then serve as chairs of the students’ preliminary examination committees.
Students may change their advisor at any time. To change advisors, students need only obtain the consent of the new advisor and then inform the graduate coordinator and the former advisor of the change. Candidates for the PhD should discuss their research interests with their incoming advisor in order to identify the most appropriate faculty member to direct their dissertations. The designated dissertation director will automatically serve also as the student’s academic advisor, but students should not assume that their academic advisor will automatically become the director of their dissertations. For those MA candidates who wish to enter the PhD program, it is beneficial to have as their advisor a faculty member in their proposed doctoral field before they submit their MA portfolios, since the portfolio is also the PhD qualifier.
Students must obtain explicit agreement from a faculty member for that faculty member to serve as dissertation director. Dissertators who subsequently decide they would prefer to work with a director different from the one initially designated must speak with the director of graduate studies in order to replace the initial advisor. Additional advice is provided in “Recommendations for Dissertators” and in the requirements and guidelines for the three doctoral programs.
Advising and Course Enrollment
Students should consult every semester with their advisors about enrollment for the following semester, and they must keep their advisors informed if they modify their enrollment choices following the initial consultation. To enroll in classes, students require the authorization of their advisors given by completing the “Advisor Consent to Enroll” electronic form shared each semester by the graduate program manager. The advisor’s permission is also required to authorize any subsequent schedule change a student may make by adding, dropping or substituting courses. Advisors should remind students of their obligation to fulfill the requirements imposed by the Graduate School as well as those of their particular graduate program.
The department strongly recommends that advisors have a substantial meeting with each of their advisees every semester, not only for the purpose of approving course selections but also to discuss the evolving strategies and overall plans of both MA and PhD students as they progress through their program. MA students who intend to continue into the PhD require practical guidance on how to start preparing for the next stage of their studies. Such guidance is particularly vital when the range of choices opens up after the MA program, at which time students are faced with decisions about how to navigate through coursework, prelims, and the dissertation to the job market and need to choose areas of concentration, languages, and the PhD minor. Students should be aware of the importance of moving along as expeditiously as is reasonably possible toward the completion of their degree.
The Graduate Studies Committee reminds departmental faculty of the requirement checklists for the MA and the PhD programs. The advisor and student fill out these checklists in order to document progressively which requirements have been met.
Advising Resources
There are many advising resources available to students. Students can reference the program’s web site (https://spanport.wisc.edu/grad/), the program’s Graduate Handbook, the Graduate school’s web site (http://grad.wisc.edu/), and the Graduate School’s Academic Policies and Procedures (https://grad.wisc.edu/academic-policies/). However, when students require further clarification on issues and policies, they may consult the graduate program manager, their academic advisor, the director of graduate studies, and/or the department chair.