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Supervisors play an important role in the educational life and progress of graduate students. Having a positive and supportive working relationship with one’s supervisor is important to student wellbeing and contributes to graduate students’ ability to thrive within higher education. In this chapter, the authors examine the impact of supervisors on graduate student wellbeing and thriving within the context of higher education. Students with highly autonomy-supportive supervisors tended to report higher thriving. Findings indicate that the quality of interactions, the type of support provided by, and the quality of student–supervisor relationships are important factors and considerations for graduate student thriving. This study advocates for the recognition of the critical role that supervisors play in the thriving and languishing of graduate students and calls for more structured and wide-reaching professional development programs that work to create an environment where autonomy-supportive and compassionate supervision are seen as the standard for graduate faculty.

After President George Bush coined the phrase “New World Order,” he tried to articulate it in terms that would infuse a new sense of mission to America. He seemed to regard instability abroad as a danger for America.⁴ Although President Bush wanted to continue the U.S. internationalist policies of the last forty-five years, Americans and the Congress tended to lurch between isolationism and idealism. But as the Cold War has wound down, there can be little doubt that a New World Order is emerging that creates challenges for the United States and other Western nations that might be equal to those that existed when world politics turned on the confrontation between East and West. Unfortunately, most of the attention has been focused on the major events that created the New World Order: the dramatic dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union, and the resurgence from their remains of independent republics. It appears that the 1990s will see foreign aid both from the United States and from the other Western countries going primarily to help establish free-market economies in the former communist countries.