More than one supervisor?

[higgicd]

I am not sure what the PhD supervisor etiquette is, as I am not officially a PhD student yet. But someone mentioned the other day in passing that he had three different supervisors at three different universities for his degree. Is this a common practice? How would one navigate such an arrangement?

It would be nice to get another supervisor with a different area of expertise at another school... But do things work like that?

[robot_hamster]

Are you thinking advisers? Or maybe even committee members? It is common to have several committee members, but I know a few people that have two advisers.

[fuzzylogician]

You can (should, must) have several professors on your dissertation committee, some of which may be from other departments on universities (how easy/hard it is to add an outside member to your committee changes from school to school). It's much less common, though it is possible, to have several advisors that you work with throughout grad school. It may be useful if you are working on an interface area where you need people with different expertise to help with your work, but otherwise it sounds to me like it could create a hassle trying to satisfy the (sometimes contradictory) requirements of two or more primary advisors. That said, at my department we don't have advisors but rather we are encouraged to work with as many people as we like on our projects. I meet with three professors on a regular basis (all within my department) and so far it's been great.

Edited January 25, 2011 by fuzzylogician