What to expect from grad student lab life—from a professor’s POV

One of the best parts of my job as a faculty member within the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at UW–Madison is working with a research team of brilliant and creative students from across the United States and around the globe. Our group, UW STACS (Systems and the Technologies Across the Computing Stack) Lab, strives to be like many in our department: collaborative, supportive, ambitious and innovative.

If you’re considering graduate school, choosing a research lab and advisor is an important decision, and you may have questions about what day-to-day life in a lab is really like. How are students matched with an advisor? How much independence do students have? What is the advising and mentoring culture like? To help answer these questions, I’m sharing my perspective as an ECE faculty member, along with input from other professors in the department, on what our graduate students can expect from life in an ECE research lab at UW–Madison.

How are students matched with an advisor?

There is no centralized assignment process. Before applying, we encourage applicants to look at ECE faculty profiles and identify who has research interests and expertise that best align with their own. You can find much of this information on faculty members’ lab websites, course offerings, seminars and publications. You can also reach out to current students in labs you are considering.

By the time an applicant accepts an admission offer, they generally commit to work with a specific advisor, and then the advisor and student will confirm the arrangement as permanent by the end of the first year. That relationship remains one of mutual agreement after that point. Also important: students may have more than one advisor; for example, a secondary advisor with complementary expertise.

What is the advising and mentoring culture like in the department?

The ECE department maintains a written set of mentor-mentee expectations that our advisors and students review when they begin working together. As faculty advisors, we are expected to be forthright about intellectual property, disclosure and authorship policy, and to make sure our students receive proper credit for their contributions. We also are expected to prioritize our students’ training and give regular, timely feedback on our students’ standing. Goals and timelines are meant to be planned jointly, including the timely formation of thesis committees.

In addition, our research groups and labs must remain respectful, emotionally supportive and free of harassment. Individual labs often layer their own norms on top of this baseline, but those norms must be consistent with our department-wide expectations. If an advisor or lab falls short of these expectations, our department has a formal grievance process for raising and resolving the issue. That process is separate from the process through which our students can change advisors when the concern is simply a misalignment of interests.

Like the rest of the department, our group strives to be a work family. One’s successes and challenges are shared by all, and mentorship comes from all directions. Though not every student may work on the same project, we all learn to speak the same technical languages and help each other grow to whatever we aspire to be.

What is the student community like?

Community extends beyond an individual lab. Faculty, staff and students alike cultivate a culture of respect across the entire department. Beyond the lab, the ECE department has a variety of student organizations, including the ECE Graduate Student Association, that organize social and service activities open to any student who is looking to get involved. The College of Engineering also hosts more than 70 student organizations spanning a wide range of professional and personal interests, in addition to opportunities across the broader campus.

How frequently do students meet with their advisors?

This varies by advisor and is not fixed at the department level. Meeting regularly with an advisor is standard practice, and meetings typically occur during weekday business hours. Whether a given advisor holds weekly one-on-one meetings, biweekly check-ins or relies primarily on group meetings depends on individual style. This is a great question for prospective students to ask not only their prospective advisors, but also current students in the group.

As an example, our UW STACS Lab meets once a week as an entire group, on top of weekly one-on-one meetings and smaller project meetings. Like many professors in the department, my door is regularly cracked open so that students can ask questions outside of meeting times or just stop by for a chat. Groups will often have other channels available for asynchronous communication; for example, we use Slack or Microsoft Teams to ping each other anytime.

How much independence are students given?

This depends on an advisor’s individual style and is not standardized. While advisors help set realistic goals and timelines and support students’ intellectual development,  students take primary responsibility for their own education and bring initiative to their work. Beyond this shared baseline, the balance of guidance versus independence varies by advisor. Prospective students should ask advisors directly about their approach to guidance, especially in areas such as their thesis milestones, literature review, paper writing and lab work.

What are the typical expectations regarding working hours, publications, conferences and graduation timelines?

There is no department-mandated number of work hours per week. In general, we consider weekends, holidays and evenings as downtime, and normally hold meetings during regular working hours. When a deadline such as a paper submission calls for work outside normal hours, we mutually agree upon this work in advance rather than treating it as routine.

There also is no fixed number of publications required for graduation; this depends on research topic, advisor and dissertation scope. Advisors are transparent about authorship policy, and we acknowledge student contributions and support timely publication of student work. Our students work with their advisors on realistic timeframes for drafts and submissions. Similarly, we encourage our students to attend and present at conferences, with advisors helping to secure funding for that travel, though there is no set number of conferences a student must attend.

How long does it take to get a master’s degree or a PhD?

The PhD typically requires about five years beyond a bachelor’s degree, with actual time to degree depending on research progress. Students spend their first year completing core ECE seminar courses along with roughly 16 credits of coursework, then add approximately 16 more credits in the second year while completing the PhD Research Readiness Assessment. By the third year, students should achieve advanced graduate standing and satisfy the primary course requirements. The fourth year covers students’ minor requirement and the Preliminary Examination. Next, students attain dissertator status and schedule their final oral defense. This pace reflects the minimum satisfactory progress rather than a target or average.

An MS Research degree is a shorter timeline: a traditional two-year program consisting of about two-thirds coursework and one-third research or project credits. This culminates in a master’s thesis or a project report completed under a faculty advisor’s supervision.

For me, one of the most rewarding parts of being a faculty advisor is watching our students grow as researchers, develop their own ideas and become confident in their ability to tackle challenging problems. Every research group has its own personality and way of working, but I hope this gives you a better sense of what ECE graduate student life at UW–Madison can look like. 

If you are considering graduate school, I encourage you to explore our research areas, get to know the faculty and students whose interests align with yours, and ask questions about what it’s really like to work with them on campus. Finding the right research environment is an important part of the graduate student experience, and I hope you’ll consider whether ECE at UW–Madison might be the right fit for you.

Joshua San Miguel is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

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Feature image, submitted: ECE Associate Professor Joshua San Miguel (seated, top-center) with members of his research group.

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