Picking a Dissertation Topic and Committee Chair

From a message posted on the EVAL-WMU listserv on July 21, 2006.

OK, one and all, time to talk of serious matters, as above...

The first issue is the thesis topic, but what I have to say has implications for all of you from day one of your studies; see the last paragraph below; and for that reason I'm sending this out to all our new students for the Fall of 06, as well as those already here. This is a thought-leader program, and that's a reasonable goal for all of you, so don't think in terms of 'what can I pick that will get me the degree most reliably/easily.' That won't meet my standards and should not meet yours. The good news is that we're working on the front of the wave, so there aren't many surfers there yet, and it's a hell of a good wave. There are scores of topics you can pick that will make you a figure of note in the history of some subject area.

All you have to do (you know I'm about to oversimplify!) is to find some topic in your cognate area reading that is (i) evtv, (ii) important, (iii) clearly not well thought-out in the current literature, (iv) you can see a glimmering of how to do it better with the conceptual tools you've acquired here and in your reading in eval, AND (v) you can locate key players who will talk and listen to you. CC [Chris Coryn] and TC [Thomaz Chianca] obviously have found good topics--for CC, the evn of research is obviously tricky so worth looking at, and it turns out that there are weaknesses in their understanding and application of the logic of eval, and many countries are 'betting the farm on how to do it' so it's important, and he has pushed hard to contact the most promsing players on the international scene, and they prove to be most interested in getting help, so he's in business to change the world. For TC, since eval in international dvlpt is weak in many ways and obviously important, and Paul Clements is expert on it and keen, he's onto a great topic--and has good contacts amongst those working there, so instant niche! Daniela is attracted by sustainability: well, it's new, so possibly not well-worked out yet, and pretty important. She's now looking hard at the great deal of work that's been done in a short time on it, to see if it's good enough or has serious flaws that she can fix; and in the process is getting to know some of the main players. Promising! John Risley has a job in the heart of the area he wants to work on, and is acquiring a good rep there so will have good contacts with key players or with people who can give him introductions to key players; very promising. Good role models for you all!

That combination of five criteria is what you need to focus on, and get help with. Now we come to the hard part: picking a committee, especially a chair. The two great problems are: (i) not getting enough help; and (ii) getting too much help, that is, being made into a research assistant for someone with a research agenda who doesn't want you getting too independent. There are even people who can manage to do both things to you, and chairs, myself included, have to watch themselves constantly to walk the middle of that road. Too much help is not a service to you, it's taking away your chance to be a leader; too little is making it too hard for you to become a leader.

Now in choosing a supervisor/chair it helps if you can keep the constraints on faculty in mind, of which perhaps the most important is this: faculty appointments here are 8 month appointments and from 4/15 to 8/15 they are absolutely not paid to do any supervision, UNLESS they take on summer session teaching (or are chairs of departments, who are paid to stay at work all summer--however, directors of academic programs are not paid to be around, presumably because programs are usually smaller than departments!). If faculty do teach in the summer, the other duties of all graduate faculty are (arguably but not quite certainly) also part of their contract but only during the session or sessions that they are teaching. Some of them may do more for you than the contract requires, but only as a favor; don't ask for it unless there's no alternative. Don't expect to take comps or get committee meetings during the summer.

Just to clarify my situation, which is complex since I have only a half-time faculty position in the first place. I spent the first two months of my summer, which is the only time faculty have for serious writing/reading projects, at WMU with an open door for students, but of course that makes the rest of the summer twice as precious. I take on Heifer work during that remaining time, but that's not summer teaching and it's not part of my EC duties when I do it during the summer, it's 'outside consulting'. The part of that which I do during the 8 months of my EC appointment is part of my EC job and the income goes to EC. The summer part has no component for supervision of graduate students on their theses or other studies, unlike summer teaching duties. Now, like some other faculty, I don't take a very hard line on this issue, e.g., I already gave away my freedom from supervision, comps, committee meetings, etc. for half my summer, but it's just as well to keep it in mind, even for me, and there are many faculty who take it very strictly. (On some of these issues you might try Google Scholar on 'supervision of graduate students' though it's not full of useful stuff, there's pby a good piece or two there amongst the 62,000 hits!)

Given all this, remember that you can easily change your committe members, though it's tricky for you to do so when you're far along in your thesis work because any new member will have to 'catch up' and they don't like to do that. It follows that it's very important in planning your program from the very beginning, that you take courses from faculty that look as if they might be relevant to your thesis area, so you can get to know them and maybe ask them to be on your committee. Look carefully at the whole list of our adjunct faculty, it's on the Center web site, and look up more details on their own or their department web sites. It's a very strong group.

Michael Scriven