A third-year PhD student asks—

I just finished quals, and I’m thinking about my thesis committee. Who should I be looking for? My PI has some suggestions, but I don’t know many faculty that well.

Congratulations on finishing your quals! Selecting faculty for your thesis committee will be different than how you selected people for your quals committee—which can feel really intimidating! Your thesis committee will be with you from now until graduation, so I would encourage you to pick people who will be good career advisors in addition to providing you scientific advice. The most important role of your thesis committee is to serve as your advocate in both achieving your career goals and mediating any conflicts between you and your PI. Your committee will frequently be discussing you when you aren’t present, so you want to choose people who are going to advocate for you when you aren’t in the room and whose values complement yours. For example, if you want to graduate quickly, you don’t want to pick someone with strong preconceived notions of how long a PhD ‘should’ take.

A great place to start is with people who served on your quals committee—how was your experience with them? Were they responsive and relatively easy to get in touch with? Did they help you with writing your quals proposal? Did they advocate for you when needed? Another valuable resource is other students who have experience with a given faculty member either on their thesis committee or as their primary PI. As a fellow student, they will give you the most realistic evaluation of what to expect from this person as a committee member.

In my experience, I’ve found that faculty are generally willing to meet and discuss your project even if they aren’t formally on your committee. So, if you really want input from someone based on their scientific expertise, but they may not be a good advocate for you personally, you can still likely get that support from them in addition to your formal committee members. Just remember that scientific advice will come from many different people (postdocs, collaborators, etc.) and will evolve as your project evolves—in fact, your project may completely change by the time you graduate! But whether or not these faculty members support your goals and advocate for you will ultimately be the key factor in building a thesis committee that best serves you.

-Kyla Foster, Career and Professional Development Leadership Intern