PhD/PsyD How does co-supervision work in grad school?

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Biopsychosocialmodel

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I'm going to be attending a clinical psychology program. Although my advisor (A) is a good researcher, he is relatively new as a mentor, and he indicated he would like to be very hands off. To get the best of my grad school experience, I plan to collaborate with multiple faculties to develop a strong program of research and publications. One faculty (B) whose research I am interested in already indicated that he is willing to co-supervise me (he actually used this word at the interview), and another faculty (C) told my advisor that she is also open to collaborating. My question is how do I initiate the co-supervision process and how early can it happen (e.g., first year project, master thesis). Also how I can ensure I can collaborate as soon as possible? What are some other factors I should consider?

Thank you in advance for your advice!

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I think it's good to establish your advising/mentoring team early on. There are many ways this can work but some relevant questions are:

(1) What are the norms for your program about being involved with multiple faculty advisors? Is this relatively common or is this the exception to the general rule?

(2) In what capacity would each advisor work with you? For instance, you might split time between labs, or you might work only/predominantly in Professor A's lab and meet with both Professor A and Professor B for advising and guidance on your research.

(3) How do these multiple advisors help you to build a single, coherent research program (as opposed to different streams of work that intersect here and there)?
 
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