Choosing a Doctoral Committee
A doctoral (or dissertation) committee consists of four or five professors from your department who will help you select a dissertation topic and get your dissertation completed. Who should be on this committee? Your first step is to decide whether to ask your advisor to be on your committee. You don't have to ask your advisor to serve on your committee. However, if you have worked well together through the years and you respect your advisor's opinion, he or she can be a good addition to your committee.
Your advisor can also help you identify other professors who might be good candidates for your committee. You can also talk to other students and get their views about which faculty members will:
- Review your work in a timely manner.
- Provide constructive criticism.
- Show up for meetings.
As you put your committee together, try to choose professors who:
- Get along. Otherwise, they may be more interested in arguing with each other than in helping you work on your dissertation.
- You trust and make you feel comfortable.
- Are both good teachers and good researchers.
- Are interested in your research topic.
- Have varied interests and can thus provide different perspectives and backgrounds to their reviews of your work.
- Have high but reasonable expectations of you.
- Are not planning to leave the university for another job until you have your degree in hand (but because unexpected events can always occur, it is a good idea to have a backup person in mind, just in case).
You typically have a semester or two of school behind you before you need to choose your committee. Use this time to get to know the professors and decide who would be good members of your committee.
You also need to consider who will be the head of your committee. This will be the primary person who will help you narrow down your research topic, critique your dissertation, and provide moral support. You may want to choose your committee leader first and ask him or her to help you select other members for your committee.