[RUME] number of doctoral advisees?

[Hauk, Shandy]

Hi all,
 Like Alan, I think it is a question that depends on scale, scope, sequence, and resources. For me, at a Doctoral Extensive place (U. Northern Colorado) where I teach 2-3 courses (in a good year) and advise Ph.D. students, I outline below the way it has worked (scale and sequence). I seem to be on a five year cycle. There are not many resources (other than whatever grant money I can bring in). On average, I find research support for one student full time during the year and for 3 or 4 in summer.
Year 1: Two  students, let's call them Anna and Ben in the finishing comps/qualifying exams and starting proposal phase begin work with me.
Year 2: Anna and Ben defend proposals and complete pilot studies and Carla and Dong are new students finishing their comps who begin to work with me on their proposals/pilot studies.
Year 3: Anna and Ben begin work on dissertation data collection and writing; Carla defends proposal and completes pilot study and Dong is just finishing his comps and starting to draft a dissertation proposal;
Year 4: Anna (being quick) finishes and defends her dissertation. Ben continues writing his dissertation. Carla begins work on dissertation data collection; Dong defends proposal and completes pilot study, begins data collection; Emma, finishes her comps and starts proposal and pilot study work. 
Year 5: Ben finishes. Carla finishes. Dong continues writing his dissertation; Emma defends her proposal; Two more students, Franz and Gia begin work with me.
 
So, at any one time I have between 3 and 5 students. On average there are one or two working on their dissertation writing; one or two collecting data, and one or two who are still developing their ideas.
 
As for scope, I work with students who want to research something about which I have interest and for which I have (or will) seek grant support (at least for their work in the summers). I have declined to work with students who have interests too far afield from mine simply because I know I won't have the time or resources to properly support their progress. Right now, one dissertation-writer and two proposal-developing students and I have formed a research group and we are all working on projects related to the main topic of the group. I am finding such an arrangement MUCH BETTER. The grad students can read each others' early drafts and critique them, reducing the load on me for that work.
 
I guess that's enough for now. Thanks for reading,
Shandy