I'd understand one pub if the lab was full of first- or second- year grad students and if there wasn't as much money rolling around. But there are several active big grants in their 2nd-4th years. A couple 2nd year grad students, a few 3rd year, a couple 5th year ready to defend, a masters student, a couple techs, and a couple post-docs. To be fair, one of the 5th years was writing a manuscript. So I was wondering what the problem was. Was it that my former advisor got tenure, so he slowed down? We're the kids in the program slow workers? Was it just a slump?
Then my old advisor asked me to talk with one of his students. The student (let's call him Second Year, or SY) has been stuck for 5 months. He's been building a device to make some crazy measurements but has not been able to get each subsystem working to 100%. Best he's been able to do is 50% on one of them. The rest hover around 10% operational. So I look at this, and begin to explain what I feel is going wrong. He is unfamiliar with any of the concepts I'm referring to. These are very simple concepts that I know the average undergrad could pick up. It blew my mind. After I got SY's project back on the correct track, and helped a couple other students along the way, my old advisor wanted to go up to his office to chat.
He had miscellaneous papers piled up all over the place, and looked as though he's been stressed in trying to get the army of researchers he has to do the right things. So I found the answer: the researchers working for him suck. I don't want to toot my own horn, but I was part of a cohort of 3 PhD students that came in at the same time that as he says: "Changed the course of the lab." The 3 of us implemented proper protocols, changed improper reagents, built new devices, etc. My old advisor came straight out of grad school and did not have the breadth of experience required if you're going to start new types of projects. We added this experience and the lab started pulling in a crazy amount of money because of it. Since we came at the same time, we left at the same time. And we all thought the lab would have a couple issues, but it appears they're having major issues. So, who's to blame here? I polled my two former cohorts:
Cohort 1: Old advisor is at fault, he's recruiting the wrong students
Cohort 2: We did fine with little oversight. The students need to step it up
I took a different tactic: we didn't leave the lab in a good enough place where 'green' students couldn't keep up the pace. Part of this has to do with the fact that my old school isn't the most highly regarded (even though it is R1), so the students aren't as good. But we knew this, and should have helped the lab more instead of getting our letters and getting the fudge out of there.
I'm certain my old advisor will be able to recover, but the core deficiencies are worrying me. I suspect he'll just have to do more babysitting. I hope he's not too attached to his hair...
