Some (personal) opinions on how to assemble and best use a thesis committee

By Arjun Raj, from the perspective of US biomedical research programs

Assembling a thesis committee is an important aspect of your PhD, and should be chosen with some care. Here are some thoughts on how to go about it.

First, what even is a thesis committee?

The precise definition varies from program to program, and you should of course be familiar with your program’s guidelines, but the idea is that it is a set of faculty members who provide outside guidance and support, and formally are the ones who vote on whether to accept your dissertation (along with your actual advisor, of course). It will typically meet once a year until your defense (more or less, depending on the program), where they will ask you a bunch of questions and then (most likely) grant you a PhD! The composition of the committee is typically a chair of the committee (who runs the meetings and is generally in charge), your advisor, and a few other members. Some programs require someone outside the department or even university, although those requirements have generally been dropped by most programs over the years.

In choosing the members of the committee, it is good to delineate what the purpose of the thesis committee is. The key thing to keep in mind is: the committee is there to support you. It is evaluative in sense that they formally vote on your defense, but it is not generally an adversarial relationship—rather, they are looking to provide you (and your advisor) guidance and support on 1. Your science, 2. Your career trajectory, and 3. Your general professional well-being. As such, you will want to optimize the selection of committee members along these three dimensions, keeping in mind that no one member need satisfy all three. The other important function of the committee is to provide support and guidance in the event of conflict with your advisor; more on this later.

Choosing committee members

How do you practically go about choosing thesis committee members? When people in my lab put together a committee, we meet and discuss who to ask. Usually, the student will have a list of people that they have identified based on research similarity, usually someone we have interacted with collaboratively or that they have had a class with or something. I then might make a few suggestions. I usually know most of the people or have at least served on a committee together, so I can usually flag people based on their scientific fit and—importantly but perhaps not obviously—their scheduling availability. Some faculty are notoriously difficult to schedule for these meetings, often canceling at the last minute and so forth. That’s probably the biggest challenge I’ve seen with committee members, to be honest. As a PI with some knowledge of the faculty, I also try to ensure that we’re not just always picking the same names (which students often do because of differences in visibility in e.g. who is a charismatic teacher) and that we’re not overly taxing a few faculty.

It is worth spending some time thinking about who should be the committee chair. They can set the tone, help steer the meetings, and are generally the most “in charge”. I recommend a senior faculty member, since they will be able to use their authority to help corral the other members of the committee if things go off the rails for whatever reason. Also, they are in charge of forms, so being “on top of things” is also important. Other than seniority and a general sense of authority, though, I don’t think there is anything different in terms of selection criteria.

I would also say that when thinking about committee members, don’t stress over it too much. I have very rarely seen a committee member actually block an attempt to defend. (One time someone wanted to graduate early, but the committee blocked it—I disagreed, but the committee was not being unreasonable. Another time a committee member threatened to delay graduation, but that was due to a seriously deficient thesis document, which was fixed in time for the defense date.) Anyway, most committee members I’ve met have ranged from moderately helpful to super helpful. Sometimes they might end up being a life-long mentor, but it’s hard to say at the outset. Anyway, they will almost certainly not stand in the way of things when the chips are down.

Another important aspect of committee membership that has come up in discussions in my lab is the diversity of the people on the committee across gender/racial/other lines. I think it is important to have representation across these dimensions for a large number of reasons. On the other hand, requiring equal representation for, say, gender can inadvertently create an excessive burden on women faculty, who are often underrepresented on the faculty as a whole. One could say, well, we should at least ask and then give them the option to say no. Then again, it can be hard for faculty, especially junior faculty from these very groups, to feel comfortable saying no for various reasons. I don’t have a really good answer here and am curious what other people think. I will say that sometimes, after the person from my lab reaches out to the prospective committee member, I will reach out myself behind the scenes to the faculty member to make sure they are okay with it and don’t feel obligated and are not otherwise overburdened.

Another important source of information is other classmates’ impressions of faculty on their committees. My only bit of advice on interpreting this source of information is that students only see one aspect of the committee member’s work. Behind the scenes, they may actually be very positive, even if they seem a little tough in person. Which is fine, because you want them to be helping you grow as a scientist and a person, not just be a cheerleader. That said, if someone is just overtly hostile (very rare) or just generally useless or hard to schedule (more common), student impressions can be very helpful.

Once you have selected a set of faculty, then you will want to reach out to ask them to be on the committee. In my opinion, once you’ve done the above vetting, I think a simple email in which you explain the request (“I am working on X for my thesis. I would love to have you as a committee member based on our prior interactions and our mutual scientific interests and your expertise in X/Y. I would also be happy to meet to discuss more if you would like.”) should be sufficient. If it’s someone you or your advisor really don’t know at all, then you might want to ask for a “pre-request” meeting to see if they would be a good fit before asking them to serve, but I dunno, I don’t think it’s generally necessary. (Apparently opinions on this matter vary 🙂; whatever, it’s a minor point.) Not all faculty are going to respond, and not all faculty will say yes, so it’s good to have some backup choices.

Feedback from your committee

The committee meeting format varies from department to department, but usually starts with the student leaving the room, at which point the advisor will give a private assessment of how things are going from their perspective to the committee. Then the advisor leaves and the student can give a private assessment of things from their perspective, including any potential issues. When I serve on a committee, aside from overt issues, I’m looking for any discrepancies in the perception of e.g. time to graduation or requirements for graduation, etc.

Then you will give a presentation on your work. My main advice for structuring this presentation is to keep it a lot shorter than you think and structure it so that the most important parts are at the beginning. The big issue is that if you get a bunch of faculty in a room together, they will invariably start interrupting early and often, derailing your plans to get to the important stuff that you’ve nicely put at the end. They will give you a lot of feedback, including ideas of things to do. In my experience, one issue is that students often take these ideas as required. They are not—they are just suggestions. In the end, you and your advisor are the most closely acquainted with the work you are doing and are best placed to evaluate feedback. The committee provides an important outside perspective, but part of your job is to filter that feedback (as is the case with all feedback) to take what is valuable from it and not worry about things that may be less important.

Also, keep in mind that sometimes thesis committees serve as a forum for faculty to critique each other’s work, with the graduate student kinda stuck in the middle. This situation is rather unfortunate, but it does happen. All I can say is just try and keep cool, interact as best you can with the feedback, and take what you can from it. Again, it is all just advisory.

Also feel free to schedule informal meetings with your committee members at any time. They are there to help you, scientifically and personally. I have fielded many such meetings, as have many other faculty I know, so don’t be shy.

Committees and advisor conflicts

As mentioned, an important function of the thesis committee is to help manage advisor conflicts. It is important to know what the boundaries of this function are. In my opinion, the thesis committee is best for managing relatively minor issues. Examples include: “I’m having trouble communicating with my advisor; do you have any suggestions on how to do that better?” or “I’m worried about how my advisor is handling my paper submissions; any suggestions on how to approach them about it?”. I have often fielded 1-1 meetings with PhD students on these sorts of issues, and try my best to provide some helpful guidance.

For any more serious concerns, like a major issue with the advisor (unreasonably) not allowing the student to graduate or being abusive or whatever, I think the committee is certainly a place to start and a way to sound things out, but remember that there is sort of a limited range of things the committee member themselves can do in that instance, and these sorts of conflicts really should be elevated to the graduate group chair or some other more central authority. Also, when I field these requests, often the student wants complete confidentiality, which I of course honor, but I will usually recommend they contact the graduate group chair, and will offer to make the connection or even accompany them on the meeting. If you are a student in this situation, please take the faculty member up on this offer. It is difficult to really do much to improve your situation if you don’t allow it to move up the chain.

In my experience, though, these situations have been fortunately rare. Thesis committees are typically a positive and enriching experience for both students and faculty alike, enjoy!