The Ph.D. experience: A student's life is intense, focused

If you choose the academic life, you will always be two things at once: a student — continuously uncovering and processing new knowledge; and a teacher — conveying what you know to others. This dual life begins in the Ph.D. program, when candidates are both students taking classes and working on research, and teachers of undergraduates. At this time of year, people interested in the academic life are looking at the doctoral degree and deciding whether this intense and highly focused career is right for them. To learn what it's really like, knowIT went to someone with first-hand knowledge — doctoral candidate Juliana Tsai.

At this time of year prospective students are busy filling out applications for doctoral programs — including the Ph.D. in information systems at the W. P. Carey School. It's a big decision — first to try for the degree, and second to find the right school. Start to finish, the Ph.D. consumes at least four years — intense years at that. For Juliana Tsai the spark that ignited her career was struck during a business trip to Phoenix.

While here she decided to drop in at the W. P. Carey School. That casual visit turned out to be a turning point, because it restarted a thought process that resulted in the decision that changed the direction of her life. She investigated other schools, but "ASU was particularly inviting. Everyone was warm and friendly — like family."

Making the dream real

Tsai was a senior manager of product marketing for Oracle at the time of that business trip. She had talked about earning a Ph.D. when she was an undergraduate in computer engineering at Texas A&M University, but was advised to get some work experience as a way of uncovering research topics.

After a year at her first job in Houston she moved to Silicon Valley to work for a company that was later acquired by Oracle. Along the way she finished an MBA program, and "before you know it, 10 years had gone by, and your dream seems so far away." The ASU visit put substance back into the dream, though. "I just couldn't let the dream go," she said. "I just had to apply" to the information systems doctoral program at the W. P. Carey School.

Phoenix was appealing because, as a large metropolitan area, there were opportunities for her husband to pursue his career as she pursued her studies. Also compelling was the chance to tackle a research project — before she even started the program. When she interviewed at the Department of Information Systems she connected with Professor Rob Kauffman, whose interests coincided with hers.

This ended up being an opportunity to evaluate a theory in IS research called "the move to the middle." For the purpose of mitigating risk, most firms that procure technology solutions and services will still prefer to have a few select suppliers, in spite of the fact that the Internet has made it possible for buyers to have electronic market access to many suppliers for economical spot market purchases.

"Juliana's observation, based on her experience working in the enterprise software industry, was that firms that needed to procure complex systems and services are increasingly partnering with a single supplier," Kauffman said. "So the questions that we explored together were: Why does this observation clash with the theory? What might explain what we see? How can we extend the existing theory to provide an explanation that might have broader and more general application to other contexts?"

And so, before Tsai had even enrolled she and Kauffman had produced a conference paper which led to publication in a major journal — talk about making the dream real! Through this experience, Tsai was able to sample what a Ph.D. program is like, starting with the formulation of research questions in social science research, thinking through business problems that need to be explained with theory, and writing as a part of the larger "research craft" that Ph.D. students learn during the first three years.

It was a chance to transition into the academic world, Tsai said, and to get a better idea whether this was a profession she really wanted to pursue. It was. Tsai started the program in 2008. That early research project allowed her to attend conferences where she learned about the shifting demand for Ph.D.s in her field. She's now at the point in her training where she is formulating a dissertation thesis: firm-level cooperative entry strategies for technology-focused business networks.

A day in the life

Tsai describes the life of a doctoral student as "intense, targeted and focused." In the first couple of years, students learn balance — how to keep up with coursework while juggling a research agenda. As they progress through the program, students begin to learn how to increase their visibility in the discipline, which enables them to find research collaborators and jobs.

One of the characteristics of the W. P. Carey program that attracted Tsai was the opportunity to tap into a faculty with a broad range of research interests and experiences. It's like a family in the sense that some will teach or mentor, while others will be the friendly ear. "Your committee chair is your go-to person when you hit a snag — road blocks — in your research. That person is constantly reading your work and sharing ideas with you, so you become friends as well," she said.

Kauffmann has been her committee chair, but Tsai has benefitted from others in the department that form a support system of friends. "The program is an intense process," she said. "There are faculty who can relate on a student level, and can talk to you about handling the stress." The mentoring tradition runs very deep in the information systems department.

Between them, Chairman Michael Goul, Professor Ajay Vinze and Professor Robert St. Louis — the faculty advisor for the doctoral program — have more than 75 years experience teaching and mentoring Ph.D. students, and have chaired or served on the dissertation committees for more than 45 doctoral students.

Additionally, almost all of these former students attend one or more of the open houses that are sponsored by the department at professional meetings such as AMCIS, ICIS and HiCSS. "The association with the department does not end when the student receives her/his doctoral degree," St. Louis said. That's just the beginning of a lifelong professional relationship that enriches research activities and deepens the preparation available to students such as Juliana.

Teaching is also a big part of the experience. Tsai came to the Department of Information Systems with years of experience teaching. She worked for seven years in corporate education, delivering training on technology products to clients. After that she moved into curriculum development for corporate training. She finds teaching undergraduates especially rewarding.

"They're exploring," she said. "Although some of them are not information systems majors, they are all very interested in what our discipline has to offer." And students return the sentiment. Tsai's teaching evaluations are stellar. She drives three core objectives in her classes. First, she teaches that it's important to have soft skills — communications, management, leadership — as well as technical expertise.

Second, practical knowledge is important: for example, students must understand how important it is to speak the language of the field — the jargon. Third, in her classroom knowledge acquisition is knowledge sharing. "Everyone has something to contribute," she said. "Many of them have part-time jobs; they all know technology." Asked what it takes to succeed in a Ph.D. program, Tsai offered this:

• You must have clear goals and be self-motivated. A doctoral program is challenging and you must be able to recover quickly from setbacks. Tsai had plenty of time to observe these qualities in her father, a university professor.
• You must have a desire to learn. This may seem obvious, but even for one as prepared for the academic life as Tsai, there was a "huge learning curve." She entered ASU with a strong background in technology, but there was so much more to learn from other researchers like theory and methodology.
• You must have a personal balancing mechanism. For Tsai it's music. She was training to be a classical pianist when she decided to study technology; the piano is still a big part of her day. If it was a good day she plays Mozart; if it was rough she plays Beethoven. "You need to be emotionally and mentally prepared," she said.