Last month, Professor Timothy Chan (MIE) was one of two professors from across the University of Toronto to receive the JJ Berry Smith Doctoral Supervision Award. The award recognizes outstanding and thoughtful supervision and mentorship of graduate students over a period of at least 15 years.
The award is one of many accolades he has received for his excellence as a mentor. In 2024, he was the recipient of the President’s Teaching Award, the highest teaching honour from the University of Toronto. He was also awarded the 2023 Prize for the Teaching of the Operations Research /Management Science Practice from INFORMS, an international association of academic and industry experts in the data and decision sciences.
MIE writer Kendra Hunter sat down with Chan to talk about his award-winning methods.
How do you approach your supervisory role?
I’ve never really liked the word supervisor. It makes me feel like they are working for me and I prefer a lab environment that is collaborative and collegial. For me, the Applied Optimization Laboratory (AOL) is a group of colleagues and peers. When recruiting students, I look beyond the project and think about how this person will integrate and fit in the lab culture, not just academically, but socially as well. It helps if they laugh at my jokes!
You have to get along as people first. I have to be invested in their future and their success, and they have to be invested in being a lab member and contribute to the group’s success. It’s a partnership and one where we need to be open with each other about what success looks like.
How do you structure the graduate student experience from start to completion?
I approach it with intention. In any given year, I have between 10 and 12 students working towards their MASc or PhD with a diversity of backgrounds. I’ll connect with incoming students a couple of months before they start to encourage them to think about potential research topics and their courses for that first year, even mentioning some papers to read.
Once in the program, I meet with each student individually every couple of weeks and hold weekly lab meetings. This helps me to work closely with the students to help them figure out a concrete path by the end of their first year. I want them to feel confident, not floundering, with their research direction.
It’s also important to me to learn about their goals: do they want to go into academia or industry after graduating? For many students, this is a time when they’re figuring out their way in grad school coupled with them figuring out who they are as a person. I want to help prepare them and collaborate on how to get them on their chosen path.
Many of your former students are now in academic roles. How did you prepare them to achieve their goals?
It’s all about the mindset. A faculty search committee wants to see a colleague and not a student.
In my field, publications in certain top journals are a necessity. So, for students who want to be an academic in my field, I place significant focus on choosing the right research problem with the student and making sure the work is deep and rigorous enough.
Communication is another aspect that I emphasize. In lab meetings, students practice giving talks and presentations so they can learn to discuss their research in a crisp and engaging way. The underlying science is important but how you present it is equally important.
In-depth teaching experience is another way to stand out; many of my students have been course instructors during their graduate studies.
Finally, networking is critical. It is important for me to advocate for my students within the operations research community and beyond. I try to help open doors for them and give them access to my international network.
What are your favourite aspects of teaching and graduate supervision?
Being able to inspire students in my undergraduate and graduate classes and mentor members of my lab to further operation research is what drives me. Seeing students and lab members learn something new, solve real problems and succeed, whether it’s through coursework or their graduate degree, is really rewarding. I love what I do.
Any words of wisdom you’d like to share?
Figure out where your goals and student goals align and try to work towards those together.
And remember, being in grad school is tough; so be nice to your students. I didn’t have the easiest time in grad school and so I try to remember what it was like for me when I’m advising my own students, who frankly are much more sophisticated than I was when I was in their shoes.
