Retiring professor leaves an Unexpected Good Thing for grad students

Professor Doug Welch may want to revisit his theory of Unexpected Good Things.

Doug, who’s retiring at the end of the year, says that while many of us experience more good things as we grow older, fewer of those good things arrive unexpectedly.

Earlier this year, the McMaster University Faculty Association (MUFA) gave Doug an unexpected good thing with their 2024 Award for Outstanding Service. It was a clean sweep for the Faculty of Science, with the other two service awards going to professor Gillian Goward in Chemistry & Chemical Biology and Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Hall in Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour.

Doug says he was genuinely surprised and greatly honoured to receive the award, given that he spent nearly half of his 36 years at McMaster working in administrative roles. “There aren’t many universities where faculty associations are recognizing administrators – but then there aren’t many universities like Mac.”

Or administrators like Doug, said Physics & Astronomy Chair Alison Sills in her award citation. “Doug’s always been a source of excellent advice and institutional knowledge, and set an excellent example of a dedicated, caring, and compassionate leader.”

Like Alison, Doug has served as Chair of the Physics & Astronomy Department. He was also the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies for both Science and Engineering before becoming Vice-Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies – a key leadership role that focuses on supporting McMaster’s nearly 5,500 grad students as learners, instructors and researchers.

While research brings longer-term rewards, Doug says the rewards are more immediate when serving as a leader. “You can see the impact of the changes that you’ve helped bring about.”

For Doug, the change that was most personally rewarding came from working with a team to overhaul McMaster’s graduate application system – a complex, mission-critical project that took nearly two years to complete.

There was one other problem that Doug wanted to help solve and he made it his parting gift to graduate students in his home department. Serving as Dean of Graduate Studies gave Doug a full understanding of how grad students are funded and the financial challenges that many face.

That motivated Doug to establish the Physics & Astronomy Graduate Support Award – it’s an unexpected good things for students enrolled in the department’s research masters and PhD programs. The award lifts the support floor for grad students during a time when costs of living are outpacing available funding.

“During my time as grad dean, it became clear that those students earning the minimum amount of money at the support floor ran into many more challenges than students with earnings that were even just 10 per cent higher.” The challenges are especially acute for international students who have access to few merit-based scholarships.

Rather than establish an endowed award that allocates a percentage of funds in perpetuity, the support award is a spend-down trust. All the money donated to the award during the course of a year is divvied up among grad students who are at the funding floor. Doug says those awards could help students worry less about their finances and focus more on their studies, increasing their odds of securing scholarships and moving further away from the edge of financial precarity.

Doug and others have pledged multi-year donations to the fund to ensure that lift is sustainable – the department is also matching the total donated each year. “Some of us nearing the end of our careers have the agency to make a real difference for grad students in the here and now.”

He says the award is something that can be introduced in departments and schools across McMaster. “The financial pressures facing graduate students are a universal and urgent problem.”

The one area where Doug most envies today’s astronomy students is in the wealth of archive and survey astronomical data that’s readily available to them. When Doug was a grad student, most of his professors were still using photographic plates for their astronomical research. When he joined the department as an assistant professor, exoplanets had yet to be discovered – that wouldn’t happen until January 1992.

Doug doesn’t regret retiring during the golden age of astronomy, with major breakthroughs and discoveries advancing our understanding of the universe at a record pace.

“It’s time to make way for the next person, just like it was done for me when I arrived here as a wide-eyed 30-year-old and the youngest faculty member in the department.”

And what would Doug say to the next generation of faculty? He offers three pieces of advice.

“Be fearless. Surround yourself with mentors who will be your secret decoder ring for understanding how McMaster works. And realize that the students you’re supervising aren’t all the same but aren’t all that different from when you were a student. Give them the same support you received from your best supervisors.”

While he’s retiring at the end of the year, telescope projects and research collaborations will continue, along with plans for travel, hikes and bird watching in the great outdoors. And after five Arctic backpacking trips, Doug says he’s looking forward to canoe trips where the pack is off his back and buoyancy does the heavy lifting.