The Care & Feeding of Committee Members

 

What is appropriate behavior for a dissertation student toward his or her chair and committee member? In a traditional brick and mortar program you would see the behavior modeled by students further along in your program, but it is difficult at an online school to know what is normal.

The reality is it varies tremendously, so the first bit of advice I have for you is to ask what your chair and committee member prefer. If your chair does not suggest it, ask for a phone call to get you started, and discuss how your chair likes to structure their class and what their expectations are of students. What are they expecting from you in the first quarter? How will they decide if you should get a “U” or an “S” in the dissertation course? How would they prefer for you to address them? 

In advance, think about how you like to work… are you independent and good at personal goal setting? Then perhaps ask if you could send them your draft once a month (or whatever the 2 of you agree is appropriate). Are you a person who has a hard time structuring your time and goal setting? Then ask for help as to what is realistic. You might want to set up regular meetings or times when you will need to submit drafts. Talk to your chair about your needs, and how they can be accommodated. 

Also ask your committee member when they would like to see a draft. Many will prefer that you wait until the proposal has been approved by your chair, unless you have specific methodological or content issues on which you want their advice.  

A few general bits of advice, be polite, ask questions when you need help, no one expects you to know everything. A “thank you” for good advice, prompt response, etc. means a lot to faculty (think of it as positive reinforcement, they will tend to repeat the good behavior).  

This is important: No one will know you are having problems, unless you say something! Typically, if they don’t hear from you, the faculty’s assumption is that you simply don’t care or aren’t working on the paper. There are many people who can help if you run into problems. If you have writing issues, contact the writing center. They have editors that will work with you. If one of your committee members advises you go to the writing center then listen and try not to be defensive. They are trying to save you time and tuition money! If you have committee issues, contact your program coordinator or program director. Be assertive, it is your money and time being spent, however, always be professional in interactions with faculty and administrators. Emotional responses are never a viable solution. 

Faculty are people too, with busy schedules and family obligations, it is not realistic to expect immediate feedback. However, if you have not heard from a faculty member at all within a couple of days of sending an email, write and double check that they received it. Ask if they can give you an estimate of when you might get a response. Again, be polite and professional.  

Remember, every faculty member who reads your paper is allowed 10 business days. I know it is hard to wait, but go on to the next stage. If you are waiting to get feedback on your prospectus, then go ahead and start on Chapter 2. If you are waiting on your proposal approval, work on your IRB application and power point for your defense. There is always something to work on. If you can’t find anything else, do an update in the literature and see if anything new has come out that could be helpful.

What do you do if you are having problems with your chair? First, write out an email outlining the issues, say how you would like it to be resolved- be very professional- no emotional response. Often it helps to take on some of the responsibility. It is a good idea to let it sit for a day to make sure that you are not being impulsive. As the health psych program coordinator, I am always happy to read such email drafts and give suggestions. Here is an example of a an appropriate email: 

Dr. X,

I am concerned that it is often taking 3 weeks for you to review my proposal drafts; the delay is really slowing my progress on the paper. Is there anything I can do to make this process go a little faster? If it would help, I could just send you a couple of pages at a time. Ideally, I would like to be able to get a response on my writing within a few days to a week. Do you have any further ideas? 

If you feel that you don’t get a satisfactory response, the next step would be to contact your program coordinator or program director and ask for help.  

One final bit of advice, keep a record of when you submit papers to faculty, when you get a response, and their comments. It is a record that may come in handy in the future (this is where a research journal comes in handy!). 

Next time, we will finish up the proposal with Chapter 1.