Howard J. Sullivan,
Professor of Educational Technology

What I like most about my job as a professor is the opportunity to work one-on-one and in small groups with doctoral students. Doctoral students are bright. They are eager to learn. They have a definite goal in mind. The purpose of the mentoring part of my job, as I see it, is to help them attain that goal.

I don't have a conscious set of principles that govern my behavior in working with my doctoral students. However, the process of reflecting on the things I do has enabled me to generate a set of guidelines that work for me. Most of these guidelines, which are described below, deal with student research because that is the primary focus of a Ph.D. program.

Encourage Students to Start Student Research Early
The strong emphasis on doctoral student research and scholarship by the major professional organization for North American graduate schools seems to me to create an important responsibility for doctoral student advisors. Students' research and scholarship skills can be developed best by involving the students in research coursework and activities throughout the duration of their doctoral programs. For this reason, each student in the doctoral program in my academic area reads and critically evaluates the research literature in our field, then designs his or her own research study under faculty supervision during their first year in the program.

Encourage Student Selection of Research Topics
Doctoral students should take a major role in selecting a research topic in which they have high interest, both for their predissertation research and for their dissertations. Doctoral research, according to the Council of Graduate Schools policy statement:

". . . should be a mutually energizing experience between student and advisor; the student therefore should participate actively in identifying a good research topic."


Providing students with the opportunity to take such a role will help to ensure their continuing interest in their research area during their doctoral program and after they complete it.

Set High Expectations
Students want to think that their doctoral program is a strong one, and they respond to high standards. Setting high, but attainable, expectations for student coursework and research, while providing the instructional support and advisement needed to attain them, make the expectations seem reasonable to students. Good doctoral students will work hard to meet them.

A requirement that I initiated in our educational technology program many years ago serves as an example. Prior to being admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D. degree, each student in our program must design and conduct a data-based research study and either publish the report in a faculty-approved, refereed journal or present it in approved form at a refereed national conference. Our research coursework and supervision are structured so that students normally meet this requirement in the second or third year of their doctoral programs. Their research manuscript often becomes their first journal publication. Meeting this requirement helps students to develop their research skills and confidence, and it also contributes to building a vita that makes them more competitive in the job market.

Carefully Guide Research Thinking and Writing
I try to provide very careful guidance to my students throughout the research and writing process, particularly on the more difficult tasks. This includes conceptualizing good research studies to conduct, interpreting the results appropriately, and writing a high-quality report on the research.

I concentrate heavily on my students' writing for two reasons. One is to encourage them to write more directly and concisely and, hopefully in the process, to sharpen their research thinking. The other is to set a standard that they may choose to follow after they complete their doctoral work and begin working with their own students.

Acculturate Students
Most of my doctoral students aspire to positions as university faculty members. I find that our students benefit considerably from early and continuing exposure to the culture of our field. Our educational technology faculty members are typically able to provide either full or partial financial support for student attendance at the annual conference of our primary professional organization, the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. As a result, even though our program is not a particularly large one, we regularly have the highest student attendance of any university at the conference and often have the greatest number of student papers.

Our other faculty members and I make an effort at conferences to introduce our students to the leaders in our field, most of whom are familiar to the students from their reading of the professional literature. Some of our students, in turn, acquire modest visibility from their own conference activities and journal publications. This type of acculturation is important when our students enter the job market because they know our field well, and often many members of the field know a little about them. Our program is generally recognized as having the best university placement record in our field.

Be a Friend
Doctoral dissertations often are very stressful. Something always seems to go wrong. A committee member insists on doing things his or her own way. An experimenter forgets to give key instructions to subjects. A fire drill occurs in the middle of the experimental treatment. Or the student gets writer's block temporarily because of the complexity and intensity of it all.

Throughout the doctoral program, but especially at times like this, the student needs an understanding friend as well as an advisor. And many of these stressful situations are funny in retrospect, if not at the time. A relaxed, friendly relationship between the advisor and student goes a long way toward making the doctoral program and dissertation a positive experience for the student. A sense of humor that puts this entire process in perspective helps, too.

Keep in Touch
Staying in contact with my past doctoral graduates is important to me, and I think it's important to many of them as well. I am able to hear about and share in their successes as they progress in their careers. I am very proud of their accomplishments. And there is a strong sense of community and camaraderie among our ASU graduates.

But keeping in touch isn't all fun for our graduates. Once a year, we send them a letter that describes the accomplishments of our current students, provides other program news, and requests a contribution to our Graduate Student Support Fund. This fund, which I began with faculty contributions in the 1970s, finances student travel to conferences and some student research. It's one way that our graduates give back to our program and help to ensure its continuing success.

The mentoring process can be very helpful to students in guiding them through their doctoral programs and into their professional careers. It can be equally worthwhile for the mentor. Certainly, the most rewarding part of my own academic career has been the experience of directing the doctoral studies of more than 40 students in my 30-plus years at ASU and the many strong and lasting friendships that have developed from this experience.