Advising

The Department of Epidemiology & Population Health is committed to providing academic advising in support of graduate student scholarly and professional development. When most effective, this advising relationship entails collaborative and sustained engagement by the advisor and the advisee. As a best practice, advising expectations should be periodically discussed and reviewed to ensure mutual understanding. The advisor and the advisee are expected to maintain professionalism and integrity.

Advisors are critical to helping students navigate their academic, research, and professional paths. Because those can require different kinds of support, and because faculty background and perspectives often differ, we feel it is important that every student has two advisors; at least one knowledgeable about the department’s academic offerings and PhD requirements and another with expertise in a student's area of research. We call the first one the “academic” or “program” advisor. The second is called the research advisor or research mentor.

The academic advisor is mandatory and must have a primary appointment in the department. Upon admission, each student in the PhD program will be assigned an academic advisor from the core faculty in epidemiology. The second advisor can be anyone whom the student chooses to work with, approved by the PhD program director. The second advisor can be identified or selected no later than the end of the first year (last day of class in summer quarter of the first year).

In some cases, the academic advisor's expertise and research interests may align with the student’s research interests, and they may serve as both the academic advisor and a research mentor. In these cases, students will identify another advisor for complementary training. 

See the Graduate Advising for a statement of university policy on graduate advising.