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This website is McGill’s central resource for guiding supervisors, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows through their shared learning experiences. Addressed primarily to supervisors and doctoral students, it offers general insights from the scholarship of teaching and learning as well as specific advice on McGill’s practices.

Each page of this website has two sections:

• Practical advice: a suggestion or list of suggestions about supervision that can be acted upon immediately
• Ideas for reflection: a question and related thought provocations for long-term, formative development

The Grad Supervision website explores the breadth of the supervision experience beyond supervisors and supervisees. It covers the policies, procedures, infrastructure, resources, people, teams, and intellectual climate that shape the supervision experience. While supervisors are critical to the success of a supervisee, they are just one part of a wider support network at McGill that is designed to support graduate student and institutional success.

The content of the website was adapted from the Oxford Learning Institute’s Research Supervision website in collaboration with Oxford University and the Australian National University, which developed some of the foundational materials. It also draws on data from a series of SSHRC-funded research projects and other research carried out at McGill by faculty, doctoral students, and staff between 2006 and 2015. Lynn McAlpine and Cheryl Amundsen were the primary and secondary investigators for the SSHRC-funded research. 

In 2021-2022, with funding from Quebec's Plan d'action sur la réussite en enseignement supérieur, the website was revitalized with new content and videos featuring the perspectives of graduate students, faculty, and Associate Deans. 

This website is hosted by Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (GPS) and maintained by GPS with support from Teaching and Learning Services (TLS) and consultation with Graduate Program Directors, graduate students, and many others at McGill.