Definition of supervisor

During your PhD, a lot is expected from you. However, you may also expect some things from your supervisor. Good supervision will make it easier to finish your PhD in time, to grow as a scientist, and to develop the skills necessary for your career after your graduation ceremony. We have listed some points in the text below. In the book Mastering your PhD (available at the HIMS Office), you can also find suggestions for what to expect from your supervisor.

You should expect your supervisor to act as a manager of the 'bigger picture' of your PhD project. Together with your supervisor, you have outlined your project(s) and related research questions, but because you can have a lot of details on your mind during your research, you might lose sight of the project's actual goals. Thus, it is important that your supervisor does not lose sight of this 'bigger picture,' but instead keeps an overview of the project so that chaos is prevented. A supervisor should help you stay focused on the essentials, for example by teaching you to ask the right research questions and set up effective experiments to tackle these questions. Additionally, your supervisor should understand the milestones of a project to help you evaluate how to proceed with your research.

Practical matters, like approving travel, declarations, holidays and notifications of sickness are also done by you supervisor, for which self-service tool serves as the basis of administration.

Definition of (co-)promotor

The ultimate responsibility of the entire project and the quality control lies with the first promotor. The promotor can delegate part of their responsibilities for the creative process and research operation to a daily supervisor or operational responsibilities to laboratory staff or safety personnel.

The promotor cannot delegate the decision to continue or stop a PhD track to somebody else. If the promotor does not indicate strong doubts about the quality or potential of the candidate early in the track (for instance during the assessments after 9 or 15 months), it is the promotor's responsibility to devise a PhD track that leads to successful completion of the track. If strong doubts concerning the student's abilities arise, this should be communicated to all relevant parties as soon as possible, and the student should be made to leave. In all these cases, the promotor reports directly to the HIMS director. All matters concerning the start and progress of the PhD track should be properly documented using the forms the employer or student's funding organization has developed. In case there is no support from the side of the employer, the UvA forms have to be used. It is very important that an educational and supervision plan for the PhD track is prepared at the very start of the track.