Hi guys,

Well, I was having a perfectly normal, interesting, useful supervision meeting on Wednesday - until my supervisor told me he was dumping me! apparently he feels he is 'too busy' to dedicate enough time to me and my project, and thinks I would be better off with someone else! he had already discussed this with my potential new supervisor, but wanted to check it was ok with me before they actually did anything about it. I was pretty much gobsmacked and felt a bit backed into a corner, so just mumbled 'yes that's fine' and ran out of there!

he has since promised I'm not being abandoned by him, and he will still be around if needs be. the problem is, i already have three supervisors (2 at my uni, and then him, based at my industrial sponsor, where i spend all my time), so this would potentially mean i now have 4! fortunately i am only 11 months in, but even so this means i would have to spend hours with my new supervisor bringing him up to speed with my project. i have met him lots of times before, and i am sure he would make a great supervisor, but i was perfectly happy with my old one :-(

so basically, i was wondering:
1) has this happened to anyone else before?
2) i am not overly happy about the change but is there anything i can do about it?!
3) is having 4 supervisors just going to cause huge problems?
4) can my supervisors at uni refuse to allow the change to happen, as they are 'in charge' of my project?

any advice would be most welcome!

What uni are you at sweety?

Blimey, no I have not heard of that before.
Although it is annoying, especially the way your supervisor has handled the situation, I suppose the question is whether you'd want to "force" him to stay your supervisor when he's indicated that he's too busy and by "dumping" you actually not inclined to spend lots of time supervising you. If you are in principle happy with the new supervisor, go with him. I have several supervisors and it works relatively well as I seek their input whenever required, but I think it really depends on the specifics of your projects...

Don't worry about it too much. I have (had) four supervisors: 2 industrial and 2 uni and you can usually thrash out a consensus about what needs to be done. One of my industrials has since lost his job but it shouldn't interfere too much with what I'm doing.
Don't panic, more is (sometimes) better! (up)

Hi,

1) Not exactly the same situation as it was more of a mutual "splitting up" than "dumping" but my first supervisor has stepped back to become my third and a new primary supervisor stepped in (don't want to give too many details as it would definitely identify me).

2) I was massively gutted (so was he) when we finally realised that Prof A was going to have to step down. He does still work on my project in the form of helping me with my writing (but nothing to do with interpretation of results or dealing with data etc).

3) Is there any reason why you can't split up what your supervisors are responsible for? Prof A is my writing supervisor, Dr C (my new primary) is the research supervisor who deals with pretty much everything, Dr B deals with the shape of the thesis, the story I'm telling.

4) I can't really help you with this...sorry.

I want to add that the way your sup dealt with this was really insensitive and not very professional but try to move past it.

Take care

A

thanks everyone, as always your advice is reassuring and sensible ;-)

i guess i was just a bit shocked by it, and now i have had time to think about it i guess it's not too bad! as i said, my 'new' supervisor seems really nice, and i'm sure he will be good at it. the main problem is that i really like my current supervisor, and feel a bit rejected by him!! he gave the impression he just couldn't be bothered with having a phd student at the moment and was fobbing me off onto someone else.... probably me being over-sensitive though, and if he really is too busy then at least he has been honest and found me a replacement rather than just carrying on regardless.

but hopefully, as you have suggested, i could keep him in the loop and still go to him for specific things that won't take up too much time, and hopefully he will still want to have some involvement in the overall thesis. he has mentioned publishing some things together so maybe that will be a way of keeping his input!

thanks again, feeling much better now :-)

It's good your supervisor was honest about how much time he had to give, it's much better to be clear about these things than to have someone who was only halfheartedly there time wise.

I'm sure it must have been a shock but at least this has happened relatively early on - and 2/3 of your supervisors are staying the same - you will be fine! I know how you feel though, my supervisor is about to dump me or so it would seem... about 2 months ago he said "I've no interest in this thing (that's my research btw)" if it goes on past 1st August"... Wow thanks for the support!!!