Welcome to Human Centered Design & Engineering! Faculty and staff are excited for your arrival and look forward to getting to know you throughout your time here.

Over the years we’ve developed a list of resources and helpful tips for our incoming doctoral students. We hope you will find this beneficial as you start your new adventure.

• General Advice for a Successful PhD Experience
• Departmental Traditions
• Curriculum
• Departmental Resources
• HCDE PhD Student Conference Travel Assistance
• Miscellaneous Campus Resources
• Health & Wellness Resources
• Graduate School Resources

General Advice for a Successful PhD Experience

Being a PhD student is a creative endeavor. Requirements and milestones are merely structures. Readings, talks, and conversations provide raw materials for scholarship. Analysis and research methods provide techniques and ways of learning and knowing. New knowledge results as you combine know-about with know-how.

Ingredients of a Successful Scholar

• Mastering research literature
• Being practical (assessing and using what is close at hand)
• Being entrepreneurial (reaching out for new knowledge and opportunities)
• Participating in local (department and UW) community efforts and professional community efforts such as conferences and projects
• Being passionately curious
• Sharing the results of your research

Anyone with above average determination and intelligence can get a PhD – being a scholar is a higher calling. What is your goal?

General Advice

• Involve advisors early and often – both faculty advisors and Director of Academic Services
• Seek advice from lots of people
• Be strategic on who you seek out as advice givers and advisors
• Have a clear idea of your goal(s)
• Give clear instructions to people from whom you need things
• Procrastination is the enemy
• Start somewhere, start now
• Editing is easier than writing
• Take your own advice
• Remember to take time for yourself – work out, relax, have fun

Your Faculty Advisor(s)

Your relationship with your faculty advisors is the cornerstone of a good PhD experience. Like all relationships and collaborations, this takes work. There is no single model for a strong advising relationship. Some advisors and students collaborate on every project, while others are more of a resource for students who pursue independent projects. Advisors also adapt their style to each student's needs at that time.

We offer the following suggestions for finding the right advising relationship for you:

• Talk about your goals and what support you need. Because there are many different ways advising can work, an advisor working very hard to support a student's development may still make mistakes. Are you looking for space to explore a topic? Are you looking for more hands-on guidance? Are there particular methods which which you want to gain experience? For what career paths do you want the PhD to prepare you?
• Discuss working rhythms with your advisor. Some people teach on certain days or write in the mornings or prefer regularly-scheduled meetings vs. spontaneous walk-ins; others prefer some off-campus time while others like to be in the office. You may have different rhythms than your advisors(s), and communicating about what works for each of you can help avoid misunderstandings and build a productive working and mentoring relationship.
• Learn from your advisor’s research and other career experiences. Remember that they too went through graduate school and passed through similar hurdles and stress factors. They have a wealth of research experience and a proven pattern for success. Learn all you can from both research and non-research perspectives. Ask questions. If they are good at multi-tasking and managing time, observe and emulate. Take notes on what works for them and try things out. At the same time, your advisers when through their graduate program, possibly decades ago – so what worked for them may not be what works for you or the present moment.
• Be proactive! Initiate meetings. It's often better to have a regular meeting schedule and then cancel as needed than to rely on ad-hoc meetings.
• Your needs may change over time, and so you should take time to check in about them periodically.

Finally, no advisor or mentor can meet all of your needs as a scholar. Actively seek out a network of mentors. You can also engage your advisors and peers in discussing your mentorship needs and who might be good to connect with about them.

Your Academic Advisor

Why do you need two advisors? Well, they serve very different roles. Kathleen Rascon serves as the liaison between doctoral students and the Graduate School, which has several policies related to doctoral education. She will help you navigate through the various PhD milestones, and provide course registration advice to ensure satisfactory degree progress. She can also be a great resource in determining how to manage those times when life may intervene with academic progress. Research-focused questions are better addressed by your faculty advisor.

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

Promote and contribute to the work of your advisor, your lab mates, your fellow students, your department, the College of Engineering, and DUB or other research centers in which you participate. Our culture is collaborative rather than competitive, and one person or team's success often brings even more resources and opportunities to your research area, the department, and campus.

Our culture also takes effort to develop and nurture. That happens through small acts like pausing in the hallway to hear about and give feedback on someone's great new research idea, larger commitments like joining the PhD Program Committee or a faculty committee, and everything in between - like contributing to Visit Days or reviewing some doctoral applicants. Give back to the communities that you care about and that nourish you, but also set boundaries to make sure to protect time for your scholarship and the other parts of your life.

Defining Your Goals

Where do I want to be? What are your short and long-term career objectives? What are you looking for in an initial post-graduation job? In 5 years? 10 years?

Where am I now? What are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (i.e., those things outside your control that might keep you from pursuing your career plans and succeeding in graduate school)?

How am I going to get there?

• Outline a course of action to help you obtain your goals in light of your current situation
• Focus on one or two areas that you want to develop
• Consider ways to leverage your strengths in order to exploit your opportunities
• Consider ways to address your weaknesses and to help you overcome them
• Make a plan with specific action steps you can take to help you attain your goals

Find Your Intellectual Home

To be a successful scholar, you need to be supported by a community of scholars. Find your community ASAP. Do you like the people? Does the research excite you?

The communities through which ideas, papers, and ultimately a job, flow are centered around conferences and journals. What conference(s) are you going to participate in every year so that you are known by the time you are ready to graduate? What journal(s) are you going to read every month?

To become part of the community you need to both participate and contribute.

Stress is Corrosive

• Be proactive about your mental and physical health
• Exercise
• Practice healthy eating habits
• Take care of your sleep schedule. Avoid all-nighters.
• Find allies
• Participate in mindfulness-based stress reduction and related programs
• Consider therapy (individual and/or group)

Departmental Traditions

Tea time

The idea for a regular tea time came from conversations among faculty and staff about how to find time for intentional, informal interactions with each other and our students. Despite how busy everyone is, a 30-minute break in the 4th floor hallway one afternoon a week seemed feasible. The tradition is now entering its third year. The department sets out tea, coffee and light snacks, and the hall fills with faculty, staff and students. It’s an excellent way to get to know others in the department.

Curriculum

For details, our PhD curriculum page.

Year 1 Coursework