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Guidelines on how to change your advisor (aka committee chair)

The goal of these guidelines is to provide information to a graduate student who is considering changingadvisors.Throughout this process, your privacy is paramount. The staff and faculty you talk with commit to keeping the conversations private, unless topics arise (sexual harassment etc.) that require the staff and faculty to be mandatory reporters.

Your other rights as a student can be followed in parallel to changing your advisor 

You also have the right to be protected against retaliation and bullying. The key people who can help enforce MSU’s official policies in these areas are your Department Head, OIE, and the Grad School. 

If you are interested in changing your advisor, you should discuss options privately, with one or more of the following trusted people; 

  1. Identify a supportive faculty member on your committee, department head or grad coordinator (faculty member) so you can explore your options in a safe and private environment 
  2. Donna Negaard in the graduate school can provide you with suggestions and possible pathways 
  3. Potential new advisor (if not the same person as item #1 above). 

During these discussions, focus on your interests and goals. The scope of these discussions may include: 

  • Who can serve as a new advisor? Current university policy requires the chair to be a tenure-track faculty member (with the occasional research faculty). Sometimes a person from off-campus with the right expertise can be recruited to serve as co-chair. Each graduate program may have additional policies that define this. 
  • A funding plan for assistantship support. If you are on a GTA, then this is likely to continue. If your current advisor has been providing a GRA, the funding plan can include 
    • The transition semester, i.e., immediately after the change. One option could be a GTA appointment, supplemented by a Delta grant so that the total stipend during the transition semester matches any prior GRA stipend. Donna Negaard can apply for a Delta grant for you. Another option is your new advisor may be able to support a GRA. 
    • For semesters after the transition semester, the plan should include either an ongoing GRA or GTA appointment. 
  • The discussions should also include a timeline for finishing thesis/dissertation. Since you will be learning new research skills and content, it is likely this will cause a delay. The amount of delay will depend on how much work has been completed and what the new advisor and revised committee will expect, but the main message is that you do not need to start from scratch.  
  • Possible composition of new committee 
  • Authorship on papers from prior work 
    • The Office of Research Compliance can assist with issues of a student being included in publications based on the prior scholarship. The guidelines can be found here. 
  • Including results from the prior scholarship in the student’s thesis or dissertation 
    • The governing policy is that research results are the intellectual property of the university, so, in general, prior scholarship that a student worked on can be used in a thesis/dissertation. One common solution is to include this as separate chapters and to acknowledge the intellectual contributions of the prior advisor and others at the start of the chapter.  Prior manuscripts can be included in the dissertation/thesis. 
    • All of this is certainly a discussion between you and your new advisor. 
      • Considerations include if the work has been with an Indigenous community, then the student would need to follow the guidelines of those community agreements about data and the community being consulted about results.  
      • If the graduate research was funded by a grant led by the original major advisor, there need to be discussions to define how final products required by the grant (data analysis, reports, etc.) will be completed and by whom.  
      • The Office of Research compliance can help the student navigate these issues.  
    • If the student wants to include the prior work in a thesis/dissertation, but the prior advisor is concerned about the completeness of the analysis, then a trusted expert such as the department head can help review the material and navigate the approval from the prior advisor about its readiness for inclusion in the thesis.  
    • A few choices can help make including prior results less fraught. 
      • Clearly label any figures, data, or results as preliminary.  
      • Consider assigning appropriate co-authorship at the start of the chapter that recognizes all contributors. 

Once you have gathered the options and ideas, you should discuss these with your dept head and/or grad coordinator. Ask this person to also keep the conversation private until you are ready to make the change of advisor. 

The next steps are 

  • Asking a faculty member if they would serve as your new advisor  
  • Communicating with your current advisor about the change. You do not need to describe the reasons for the change. In some cases, you could ask the department head to have this conversation on your behalf, or the department head could facilitate a meeting with you and the faculty member. 

The technical process of changing your advisor after these discussions is straightforward. The E-committee revision requires the signature of the new advisor and DH but does not require the signature of prior advisor. They will be notified via email automatically by the E-committee system; hence it is recommended that the above communication steps are taken first.