Helen: [00:00:00]  They're getting feedback from everywhere. There's changes going on. And they have no idea how to pull it together. And they're just frustrated. They're spending more money. Time is going on. Their partner or family are getting frustrated with how long it's taking 

Heather : [00:00:13] You're listening to the Happy Doc Student Podcast, a Podcast dedicated to providing clarity to the often mysterious doctoral process. Do you feel like you're losing your mind? Let me and my guests show you how to put more joy in your journey and graduate with your sanity, health, and relationships intact.

I'm your host, Dr. Heather Frederick, and this is episode 24. In this episode, I welcome Helen Montgomery to talk to us about dissertation coaching. Dr. Montgomery received her PhD in 2011 from the University of Nevada Las Vegas in experimental psychology with emphasis in statistics, quantitative methodology and human factors.

She has worked in higher education for over 20 years, serving as a dissertation chair, methodologist and administrator in graduate programs. After years of witnessing doctoral learners who were frustrated, lost, or felt hopeless, she identified a need to offer dissertation students a space where their existing skills were recognized and celebrated, and new skills could be taught and nurtured in a kind and understanding way.

In 2016, she started The Kind Coach. And if you're out there thinking, I don't understand what my committee wants. I keep making changes, but they just aren't good enough. Or I don't know how to address the feedback I'm getting. Then this episode is for you, Helen. Welcome to the show.

Helen: [00:01:50] Hi, Heather. Thank you.

Heather : [00:01:51] Today we are going to talk about using a dissertation coach, and I just want to start at the very basics here. What is a dissertation coach? 

Helen: [00:02:03] Well, there are two types of help that individuals who are doing or pursuing a doctoral degree can get there are dissertation coaches and their dissertation editors.

So we'll start with what a coach is. A dissertation coach is similar to any type of other coaching in sports, career coaching, self-coaching, or anything like that. It's somebody who works with you to help you through a complicated process, usually a dissertation process, or sometimes I also work with master's degree students.

So the process of writing a dissertation or a master's thesis.  A coach is there to help you with most parts of that process, but mainly a coach will focus on writing, helping you develop your idea, helping you frame your idea, into a researchable project, maybe helping you with some of the academic literature background, brainstorming ideas.

So offering that type of coaching at a dissertation level or for the dissertation process. 

Heather : [00:03:10] Now, a lot of people might be thinking, Hey, wait a second. That sounds like what my chair should be doing. But on many of these episodes, faculty have talked about the chair only has so much time. And many students, because you get to this point in the process where you're somewhat isolated flounder and need this outside help of someone to really guide them through the process, maybe in a much more frequent manner.

Would you say that that's one of the main differences between a coach and a chair? Is that there's much more frequent interaction?

Helen: [00:03:48] That's right. So that's one of the differences between a coach and a chair. And as you mentioned, a dissertation chair, depending on the type of program that a student attends, will have a number of students who they're working with.

They will have a set amount of time that they can devote to each student. You know, it depends on whether the chair is an adjunct professor or a full-time professor. It depends on whether they're teaching additional courses. In a more traditional setting, all professors teach a full load. So,  there are a lot of varying factors.

There's a lot of variability in what a dissertation chair can do, or can physically and cognitively do.  When learners enter dissertation programs, especially programs that are online or virtual programs, or some of them are called accelerated programs, not only are they entering a program where the contact with their chair is virtual.

It's not face-to-face, but also most of the students, the average age for an online dissertation learner is 42. So these individuals have practical skills and career skills, but may not have the academic skills or their academic skills, maybe rusty, maybe  20 years since they've taken a statistics course.

So a dissertation coach is sort of an augmentation or an extension of the chair. Also a dissertation coach has the latitude and the freedom to provide certain services or information that a chair may not be able to provide. And so we can get into that a little bit later, but yes, a dissertation coach is someone who can

augment and supplement the instruction that a chair provides to the student. 

Heather : [00:05:32] Okay. So Helen, you just said, sometimes the coach can provide different services. And you said, we'd talk about that later, but I'd love to talk about that right now. 

Helen: [00:05:42] Okay. So we're going back to the dissertation time commitment, and a student load, course load, whatever the factors are that limit their availability or limit their ability to devote face time.

Is what I think of it or real-time to a Student. Also a chair usually is not in a position to model academic writing for the Student or to do literature searches for the student because the student may not know how to do really thorough literature searches. So that is not usually something that a chair has time for.

I'm sure most chairs would love to offer that kind of help the students, but there usually isn't time. So a dissertation coach is someone who can help with those kinds of tasks. Really kind of do this, I guess it would be like Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, right? So really just meet the student where they are, show them what to do and how to do things and get them going on their own eventually by modeling the skills that the students should have as a doctoral learner.

And that's usually not something that chairs can do because of time restraints. 

Heather : [00:06:57] And I think you bring up a really great point here about modeling, because I know in episode 11, I interviewed Dr. Jules about editing and how important it is to get an really, to get an editor. All

students should probably be working with one. And she spoke specifically about having one at the end of chapter three and at the end of the final manuscript, but a dissertation coach often comes in much earlier than that.  And the idea that I want to build on that you talked about was that your modeling skills so that this student then has those skills.

You're certainly not writing the paper for them. And I think there might be some misconceptions out there and even hesitation with students. When someone recommends, you might want to look into a dissertation coach of thinking, but wait, isn't this supposed to be my work? And is that legit? Is it okay for me to go outside the university?

Helen: [00:07:49] Right. So that's a really good question. I'll take a little bit of time to provide the answer and really break it down. As a dissertation coach myself, my goal is to honor, first and foremost, the Learner's work. So if you encounter a coach who recommends that you change your dissertation topic, probably not a good idea.

It's a red flag. Really the point is to honor the student's work because it is your dissertation. I've already done my dissertation. So I don't want, I don't want to go through that process again, but again, as I mentioned, previously, students come into doctoral programs, especially online or accelerated programs at varying degrees of ability to be a doctoral learner.

And this is not because they're not supposed to get a PhD or they're less than other learners. It just depends on the time and distance between their earlier education and their current education. So a lot of time, what happens is students get caught in the process where they have a research idea, and they know what they want to research, but they get caught in the feedback loop with their committees where the committee's providing feedback, but the students don't know how to address it.

So a good dissertation coach will be working a lot on that, finding that middle ground between student's ideas and the committee feedback and the requirements of the university. 

Heather : [00:09:15] And Helen, before you go on, I just want to make a quick comment. What you described is that you're almost a translator in a sense.

So the student does the work submits it, all this feedback comes in. They're overwhelmed by the feedback. They're not even sure sometimes how to make sense of the feedback. You translate the feedback so that they can implement it. 

Helen: [00:09:35] That's right. That's right.  As a coach, my goal is not to write the student's dissertation it's to ensure that the student is able to write and perform the tasks necessary for their own dissertation and also respond and correspond to their committee and university requirements.

So in that sense, I'm not writing the dissertation for students, but I have had plenty of students who would come to me and they said, you know, I've been in this process, just the dissertation process, for two years now. I keep getting feedback from my committee. I have a lot of committee changes.

Everybody wants a different thing. I don't know what to do. So I will say, okay, Here's what your problem sentence or your purpose sentence or your purpose paragraph should sound like, let me edit this for you and model this for you so that you can see the type of writing that your committee expects. And so that's what I mean when I say modeling things for dissertation students.

Heather : [00:10:38] And I think one of the main reasons that a student would use a coach is to have someone on their side to embellish or strengthen those skills that they didn't pick up along the way. And Hey, let's face it. Sometimes you get to the dissertation stage, you may be using an analytical strategy that you barely

touched on in a content course, and it's up to you to learn this. So in that sense, you become a tutor. But I also have witnessed personally, as a chair, when my students have used coaches, the incredible amount of time that is saved in terms of revision cycles, because there is this tendency to get caught in this feedback loop.

And it's almost like you need this independent set of eyes to see all the feedback and  tie it together and help the student make those corrections so they can move forward. 

Helen: [00:11:28] That's right. And that's how I see it. It's, it's supplementing and translating. I think that's a really great way to put it.

It's translating what committees want and what they're looking for, or most likely are looking for and wanting to see in a paper. 

Heather : [00:11:44] When do most students decide to get a coach? And do you think it's, I mean, you've worked with so many, do they just kind of throw up their hands and say, I need more help or do the  chairs and the committee members suggest, Hey, you might want to think about a coach?

Helen: [00:11:59] Unfortunately, most students decide to get a coach when it's very late in the game. I love it when committees suggest that you need to work with a dissertation coach and they're just starting on chapter one, or just starting building their gap to support their research or formulating the problem statement.

That's really the ideal time to start with a dissertation coach. That saves a lot of time and a lot of money, both on the coaching end and on the program end. Unfortunately, most students, probably 80% of my clients have come to me when they're in their last class and it's two weeks left until the end of class and they've appealed or have to appeal to get an extension.

And they haven't even finished their proposal and they don't know what to do, and I need to save their life. And this is, this is it, you know? And certainly that's doable and workable, but you do end up putting yourself in a pinch where you will grab whatever coach comes along, you don't have time to be discriminating and you will likely spend more money

and a lot of anguish on the work.  I'm not saying that every single student needs a coach. I do think most students can use coaching help. I think the majority of students, especially in accelerated programs and online programs really should work with a coach. However, my advice would be to contact a coach or start shopping around for a coach when you first encounter a muddy point.

Right? So when you get to a point where you are sitting there going, I don't understand what I'm supposed to be doing. That's time to contact the coach or to start shopping around for a coach. 

Heather : [00:13:48] And we're going to talk specifically about how to find a good coach, but a question that I was thinking as you were talking was, should a student tell their chair that they are getting a coach?

Helen: [00:14:00]  I would be transparent about it. My advice would be to ask your chair, if they think you would benefit from a coach, you certainly don't want to be doing anything that will create problems in your program. I really have never encountered it as an issue. It's been my experience that most universities, again, especially if we're talking about online or accelerated programs, either encourage students to work with coaches, or at least don't prohibit that students work with coaches. So I have never encountered a program or university that prohibits students from working with coaches.

There are probably programs like that, but, I am not aware of any.

Heather : [00:14:44] Yeah. And I think probably, you know, coaching as just a part of life, these days is more accepted. People recognize the value of a quote, unquote outsider, coaching them on a skill that they want to strengthen. I think another reason that probably this is something that is accepted is that in the end, you have to own your work, right?

So you will be orally defending this. So if you're out there getting outside help in a way where they're doing the work for you, that's going to come to the surface and you're not going to be getting your degree. 

Helen: [00:15:18] That's right. And that goes back to this, you know, the hesitation that students sometimes have, again, a good coach is not going to do that because

eventually the Student will have to go out there. Of course, a good coach, if the student wants to, will also practice their defense presentation with them as well, that's part of coaching services.  Everybody should practice their defense dissertation many, many times, but it's a good idea to do it with someone who is not your family, friend or partner.

Heather : [00:15:46] I practiced mine in front of my cat. I used to kid that I thought my cat should receive an honorary doctorate, she had to listen to my defense so many times. But as you were speaking, I was thinking about the first time I had a student use a coach, outside of my recommendation. And by that, I mean, I didn't recommend it.

I will often recommend to students that I work with, I think you would get a lot of value out of a coach, but I was working with a student and she came to me with this method that she wanted to use. And I thought that is just brilliant. Where did you discover this? And she said, Oh my dissertation coach

 Turned me on to it. And I'm like, you have a coach? I, you know, I'm sure there were many times that I frustrated her or comments from the committee frustrated her, it was someone she could go to that could kind of help her find balance and help her go through all the comments. She would go through very few revisions.

It was amazing, but the way she worked with me as her chair, her committee and this coach was seamless because I used to think of coaching just for the students that I saw struggling right away. But what I found was that a coach could be beneficial for anyone going through this process truly. I truly believe it releases some of the stress and strain on your family relationships, the demands you have on your committee and you brought up, it can save a lot of money and people might be thinking, a coach certainly is costly,

how could it save money? Because you're not repeating classes, you're not extending your time in the program. Right? So let's talk about how to pick a good one. What are some of the tips that you have?

Helen: [00:17:21] That's a really excellent question. And you know, the whole time you were talking, I kept saying to myself, contingent upon the quality of the coach contingent upon the quality of the coach, right? There is a 

difference among dissertation coaches. My checklist for picking a dissertation coach is number one, you want them to have a terminal degree, preferably, a PhD degree because they will have had exposure to more theoretical background and kind of how to tackle theory in doctoral work, which is always, always, always a sticking point for learners.

Always a sticking point. So, so perfectly PhD, but any type of a terminal degree, that would be a must. Number two, I would advise that people pay attention to the communication of the coach, right? So it's not unreasonable to reach out to somebody, send an email or fill out a form or call, send a text.

However the coach wants you to get in touch with them, but you should hear back within 24 to 48 hours. To me, a big one is it is essential that you talk to a real person. It is absolutely essential that the coach talks to you and actually you hear their voice. You know, they're a real person with a real phone number and it's not an  automated message reaching back to you.

You know, this may be a personal preference. I don't know, but I will say this. I do not think that a dissertation coach should have people filling out contracts or prepaying large amounts of money in advance. Clients need the flexibility to walk away. Doctoral learners usually are amassing already a lot of debts.

They're owing a lot of money. They're worried and anxious about the money they're spending on their doctoral education across the board. I think that's true, Heather, you and I know that's true. So there shouldn't be any kind of prepayment contracts or forced relationship back and forth between the client and the coach.

That relationship should be organic in my opinion. And they should be working together as long as that relationship works for both parties. Finally, you want your coach to have worked with doctoral learners. They don't have to have been a coach for a long, but they definitely need to have experience working with doctoral

learners and understanding the requirements of a dissertation. And very, very, very finally, just your gut. If you feel good about the person. Then they're your coach. If you don't feel good about the person then they're not.

 I 

Heather : [00:19:57] love your final bit of advice because a large part of this podcast is helping people tap into their intuition, be able to listen to themselves.

So let's do a quick recap. Obviously, they're going to have that terminal degree. They're going to have the doctorate. They're going to have experience with learners doing this type of work. Do you recommend that they ask for a referral? 

Helen: [00:20:20] Sure. You know, if they feel like a referral is something for further assurance.

I go with my gut. My gut is my referral, but I totally understand if somebody needs a referral. Yeah. They should be able to ask for a referral from previous clients, you know, they're the client they're paying the money and they should be satisfied that the person who's helping them is capable and qualified to help them.

Heather : [00:20:44] And you also talked about  communication in a timely manner, getting the person on the phone, making sure that you're working with a real person. Dr. Jules talked about some of the pitfalls of you could almost call them editing sweatshops. There's probably things like that happening now with dissertation coaching too.

So we just want to say buyer, be aware, you know, make sure that you're talking to a real human being and be skeptical if someone's asking you for large amounts of money upfront. 

Helen: [00:21:10] Right. And so you brought up something and I, I wonder if I can speak to it very briefly about editing.  I have worked in the doctoral setting and online programs, accelerated programs for gosh, probably over 10 years now.

And one of the things that I've encountered quite frequently is that a learner will work with an editing service. And this is what you're describing. There is a contract, you send them the document, they send you back the document. And I have encountered very often that the document comes back so changed.

The meaning has changed to the point where the learner now has to go back and change it back to what it was. So that is, that is a big buyer beware. You're right. And that is the difference between an editing service and a coach. A coach is going to be working with you, with their voice with their time on the phone, over video.

However it is that you're comfortable working and will be supporting you through the process. An editor doesn't ever need to talk to you. They just get your content, look  that it sounds good, and send it back. So there is a big difference between coaching and editing. 

Heather : [00:22:24] And while it might be a great idea to secure the services of a coach early on, some students will get a coach once their analytical strategy is decided. And maybe they took

qualitative courses sure that that's what they were going to do for their project. And now they've realized, given their research questions and what they really want to study, they're going to go quantitative and rather than enroll in a doctoral level statistics course, which may only scratch the surface of the strategy

they need to use, say structural equation modeling or logistic regression. A coach can step in at that chapter four and really tutor them through.  And you do a lot of work kind of , on those lines as well, correct? 

Helen: [00:23:08] Yeah, that's right. So I coach beginning to end, right? The title page all the way to the end of the dissertation and the references as well.

Incidentally, a good coach will also be able to be an editor. And I think that, you know, Editing academic writing is very different than editing creative writing or any other type of writing. Academic writing is a totally different animal, but yes, another criterion for choosing a coach is that they should be able to offer a comprehensive kind of suite of  help. .

I'll give you an example of time-saving. So I recently had a client who I was doing a qualitative study, and she wanted to talk to NCAA coaches about the player's academic performance. And so what I told her is I said, you know, you're going to spend a lot of time on this study. This information is publicly available.

So you can just switch over to a quantitative study and it will not take as long because you have all the information right there going back tens 20 years. And so she was able to switch to a quantitative study and completed fairly quickly. Not that quantitative studies are quicker than qualitative studies it's just in her case,

this is something that was available. So a coach will be able to do that type of comprehensive help. They'll be able to see the big picture, not just the topic or the narrow, you know, what's the problem they're researching or purpose, but the bigger view picture what's going to happen in chapter four, based on this chapter three, let me advise the student and see if they want to maybe alter their path a little bit to help them out.

So again, just a comprehensive way to help students. And that comes  from experience of not only doing your own dissertation, but also working with learners.

Heather : [00:24:56] You know, Helen, I think that's a huge point because that type of wisdom, that type of insight, I think, would be difficult to have gained just from doing your one dissertation or coaching one or two students.

You know, you've got to get started somewhere, I understand that, if you're a coach out there, but  I would say, Hey, all things being equal, look for the coaches who have been employed at universities doing dissertation, doing doctoral projects, because the more experienced you are, the more able you're going to be able to identify the, for lack of a better word, two headed fish down the stream.

Right? Hey, if you go here in chapter one, let me tell you right now, this is not my first rodeo, this is what's going to happen to you in chapter five. So let's go ahead and make some tweaks now, early on. So I just want to kind of say I obviously think highly of you or I wouldn't have you on this episode to talk about dissertation coaching.

We've worked together in academic settings. I've seen your coaching work with some of my own students and can highly recommend you.  Your website is called The Kind Coach and maybe that's something that some students feel like is missing from this process. The kindness. 

Helen: [00:26:09] Yeah. You know, when I started my business, I 

was not much to my own doctoral advisor's shock and probably my husband's, I did not start it for the money. Honestly, I started my business because over time I have seen so many doctoral learners get caught, as we mentioned earlier in this feedback loop. Right. So they're getting feedback from everywhere.

There's changes going on. And they have no idea how to pull it together. And they're just frustrated. They're spending more money. Time is going on. Their partner or family are getting frustrated with how long it's taking for them to get the doctoral degree. I mean, you name it, I've seen it. And so I felt like learners really needed a place to come and be frustrated.

And to feel like somebody hears what they're saying, somebody hears their frustrations. And that's why I created The Kind Coach, because that's what's important to me in this process is to show doctoral learners kindness. Because when you're an adult criticism comes differently, you know, you take it differently and you feel differently.

And there are lots of psychological issues and we won't get into them. But I wanted to show people that they still have value as a person. They're still a capable, smart person with all of the life experience and career experience they have completely intact. They're just learning this one new skill and they can do it, and this is how it's done.

And so the best thing about not knowing something is you can learn it. My intent is to really help people preserve a sense of themselves while going through this process and asking for help, which is difficult for a lot of people, especially for a lot of adults. 

Heather : [00:28:01] Now you may be out there listening, thinking my chair is great, my committee is so clear, I've got this incredible network of peers and support at home, and a coach isn't really something that I need. But my guess is if you're listening to this, you might be thinking, a dissertation coach is maybe something I want to look into. I will have a link to Helen's website in the show notes, but because there is only one Helen, and sometimes she's got a waitlist,

I will also link to the people section of my website, where I have a short list of Heather approved coaches. Now, Helen, before we wrap up this episode, do you have any final words of wisdom or maybe a quote you'd like to share with the audience? 

Helen: [00:28:42] Yeah, absolutely. It's by Albert Einstein and it's: if we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research.

Heather : [00:28:48] And on that note, thank you for being on today's show. The Happy Doc Student Podcast is brought to you by ExpandYourHappy.Com and you can learn more there. Until next time here's to more joy in your journey. Oh, Hey, one more thing I do need to remind you that the information, opinions and recommendations presented in this podcast are for general information only. .