8. The Advisor and Thesis/Dissertation Committee
Every Luke needs a Yoda.
—http://icextra.ice.org.uk/tlml/everyluken
IN THE SECOND FILM in the Star Wars series, the hero, Luke Skywalker, in order to become a Jedi Knight, seeks the help of Yoda, an elflike creature with pointed ears. Yoda embodies the essence of good mentoring (despite his odd speech habits and pointed ears). He provides direction, support, and practical expertise, enabling Luke to gain confidence and, ultimately, independence.
Finding a good mentor, or “advisor,” is an important element in writing a thesis or dissertation. Like Yoda, a good advisor provides guidance, direction, wisdom, support, and vision—all of which can enable you to grow as a student and scholar. However, advisors can vary in their mentoring abilities. A supportive advisor who takes the role seriously and understands its pedagogical, emotional, and political requirements can be an invaluable resource and become a lifelong colleague and friend. One who does not or who is so preoccupied with other commitments can make the process of writing a thesis/dissertation a challenge—sometimes a nightmare.
This chapter discusses concepts that you should be aware of when you choose an advisor for your thesis or dissertation.
It emphasizes the importance of student proactivity and involvement in forging a productive advisor/student relationship and is based on insights I wish I had understood when I was a graduate student.
Advisors and Mentors
The faculty member who works most closely with you in writing your thesis or dissertation is usually referred to as an “advisor,” but sometimes he or she is called a “mentor.” The terms are often used interchangeably, but for the purpose of this chapter, I distinguish them. The word mentor is Greek in origin and can be traced to Homer’s Odyssey. Mentor was the name of Odysseus’s friend who was given the task of caring for and educating Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, when Odysseus went off to fight in the Trojan War. In the Odyssey, Mentor was essentially a teacher, and his job was to educate and instruct.
An advisor, in the context of graduate study, should do more than simply “educate” students. When you seek a primary reader or director for your thesis or dissertation, I urge you to focus on the term advisor rather than mentor. As R. W. Connell observes, “[s]upervising a research higher degree is the most advanced level of teaching in our education system.” It is “one of the most complex and problematic” forms of teaching, and yet, “this complexity is not often enough acknowledged” (38). Although an advisor may indeed be a “teacher,” someone with whom a student has taken a class, a productive advisor/student relationship is one that evolves beyond that of teacher/student, ultimately developing into a collaboration between colleagues.
This goal of becoming collegial partners suggests that although the initial relationship is between a teacher and a student, eventually the relationship develops to the point that the advisor and the student are working together. An effective advisor thus aims to foster a student’s growth—in scholarship, professional development, and personal confidence. To accomplish these goals, he or she works in several arenas—not only the scholarly, but also the pedagogical, the political, and the psychological. As teachers and scholars, advisors enable graduate students to enter the scholarly conversation by introducing them to the discourse of scholarship within a particular discipline. But scholars are also writers, and advisors who are aware of writing pedagogy can help their students develop an effective writing process that will not only assist them in writing their thesis/dissertations, but also serve as an invaluable aid long after they receive their degrees. An advisor should also be a savvy departmental politician, aware of the necessity of helping students navigate the often treacherous political waters of department committees. Finally, although advisors may “criticize” work in progress, they often serve as cheerleaders and supporters, providing encouragement during the dark days when students feel tempted to give up and forget the whole enterprise. And there will be dark days—even very capable, successful students have them. As Christina Saidy, a student who wrote an excellent MA thesis, wrote:
Forget the thesis
I’ll quit before beginning
Who needs a masters?
In summary, then, “a committee chair must be strong enough to protect you and your work when the going gets tough and at the same time must be critical when the work is not up to acceptable standards” (Fitzpatrick et. al., 31). Until recently, little attention was given to the graduate student supervision relationship, which was “left to a traditional apprenticeship model, where the established ‘master’ inducts the new apprentice into the ‘mysteries’ of the craft” (Yeatman, 21). It is a model that no longer works, if it ever did, because it is “inadequate to the demands of a situation where many supervisees are barely socialized into the demands and rigours of an academic scholarly and research culture (Yeatman, 22).
Choosing an Advisor
Given the many functions that an advisor can play, you can see how important it is that you find out as much information as you can before choosing one and to think about what you need most. Is it most important for you to work with someone who has a reputation in his or her field and political influence in your department? Do you need access to particular data? Encouragement and support? Assistance in writing? Of course, ideally you would want someone who can provide everything you might need. But if you have to choose, which qualities in an advisor do you value the most?
In Chapter 1, “Getting Started,” I suggested that you begin your search for an advisor early in your academic career, getting to know faculty members whose work is connected in some way with a topic you are considering for your thesis or dissertation. Getting to know these people and enrolling in their courses will help you decide whether you would like to work with them, as will reading their published works and familiarizing yourself with their “voices” in the scholarly conversation. I also suggested that you find out as much as you can about how these faculty members behave in an advising role. Some faculty members may be renowned scholars but are not particularly helpful to their graduate students. You have probably heard horror stories about advisors who are rarely available and who take many weeks, even months, to return drafts. Find out whether these horror stories are true, and seek any other information you can obtain from more advanced graduate students.
Kathy Leslie, the writer of a wonderful M.A. thesis, notes the importance of observing professors’ habits in class. If the professor habitually hands back papers late, it is likely that he or she will not be prompt in handing back thesis chapters. Leslie also recommends becoming conscious of the kind of feedback the professor usually provides on course papers. Does the professor obsess about every mark of punctuation? Is he or she overly concerned with style? If so, will you be able to work with this person? Of course, if you are in a graduate program in which you did not take preliminary courses, you will not have this sort of previous experience.
Another point to consider is the extent to which a potential advisor will want to control your topic. Does this advisor tend to make suggestions and help students formulate ideas? Or does he or she have what Leslie refers to as a “great vision” of what your thesis ought to be? If so, are you willing to work with someone else’s vision, or will you be butting heads throughout the whole process? To some extent, a thesis or dissertation should be balanced between a topic that you are excited to write about and one in which an advisor has at least some interest. If you insist on your particular topic or approach, you may have trouble finding an advisor who is willing to work with you. But if you simply accept a topic that an advisor recommends, you may become bored or angry that you have to write about something that doesn’t particularly interest you. Another element to consider is whether you are planning to write a thesis or dissertation that departs from what is usually expected, perhaps a thesis or dissertation that adheres to a different format. If so, is your potential advisor supportive of this idea, and will he or she be willing or able to defend that choice against departmental resistance?
Another factor to consider is the professor’s availability. Does the professor travel a lot? Does he or she return email messages promptly, come to the office frequently, and seem pleased to discuss ideas with students? Availability and willingness to meet with students are positive qualities. But is the professor so student-oriented that he or she is now directing too many theses or dissertations to give you enough time? These are all important factors to consider when deciding on an advisor.
Political Factors
Of course, you will want to work with someone with whom you have intellectual and emotional rapport. But it is also important to consider a professor’s position in the department. You may have taken classes or seminars with a young assistant professor that you like a lot and whom you think would be an excellent advisor. However, in some instances, you might also want to consider how much influence that professor is likely to have with a thesis or dissertation committee because political elements can have a profound effect on your ability to complete your degree. When I was writing my dissertation, I first began working with a relatively young assistant professor with whom I had taken classes and who was genuinely interested in my dissertation topic. However, because the professor did not have a great deal of experience in directing dissertations, he did not fully understand the genre of the dissertation proposal—and, certainly, I didn’t know very much about its requirements either. Consequently, although I thought I had written a well-focused proposal, I encountered difficulty in getting it approved by the department dissertation committee. Eventually, although this professor had become almost a friend, I decided to change advisors and selected someone who had been the chairman of the department and who knew his way around university committees. Within a month of changing advisors, I learned how to rewrite my proposal with attention to what the committee was “looking for,” and my proposal was accepted. Then, as I muddled my way through the process of writing my dissertation, my new advisor was able to help me overcome any political roadblocks that arose. In my own case, then, the political element proved to be extremely important, and it is certainly something to consider when you are in the process of selecting an advisor.
As Yeatman notes, until recently, “the traditional mode of graduate student supervision has been governed by what Weber terms ‘charismatic authority’ (Weber, 295–97, cited in Yeatman, 21). The supervisee selects the supervisor on the basis of his charisma—that is, his extraordinary quality as a scholar.... And it works in two directions: in order for the charisma of the supervisor to prove to be worth believing in, the work of the supervisee has to be of a quality as to testify to the value of the supervisor’s influence” (Yeatman, 22). This old model depended on notions of elitism and genius, and doesn’t take into account the value of developing a working partnership between student and advisor.
Fostering a Collaborative Relationship with an Advisor
In “Professors as Mediators of Academic Text Cultures,” Olga Dysthe points out that “professors represent the disciplinary culture and the discourse society into which the graduate student is being socialized, and the supervisor’s conceptualization of the supervision relationship is of great importance for the interactions between the two about the student’s text” (493–4). Dysthe discusses two models of “supervision”: the monologic model, which “sees knowledge as a given,” and the supervisor’s role as that of transferring that knowledge to the student, and the dialogic model, which views knowledge as emerging from the interaction of voices and is concerned with the development of mutual understanding (500). Dysthe adheres to the dialogic model as the one most likely to produce a productive advisor/student relationship. When you select your advisor and begin working with him or her, you might consider which model you would prefer. Do you want to work “with” an advisor on a topic you consider worth pursuing? Or do you want to show up in your advisor’s office and be told exactly what to do?
As a graduate student, you should be aware that although professors are usually well trained in their particular disciplines, they receive little or no training in supervision or advising; the skill of being an effective advisor is usually learned “on the job.” As Anna Yeatman points out, “in the humanities and social sciences, the graduate student supervision relationship has been left to a traditional apprenticeship model, where the established ‘master’ inducts the new apprentice into the ‘mysteries’ of the craft” (21). In reality, though, the method tends to be unsystematic, constructed haphazardly on a “hit or miss” basis.
Because professors lack training in this area, they may simply imitate the advising model from their own graduate student days, a model that may not be well suited to your particular learning needs. Moreover, even when professors have a great deal of experience in directing theses and dissertations, their interactions and patterns of advising will vary according to the student being advised. Professors will work very differently with a confident student who comes to the office with clear ideas and gets right to work than with a pitifully insecure student who shuffles in without a clue about what he or she wants to do. Which kind of student are you? Perhaps, more important, which kind of student do you want to become? What sort of impression as a scholar and writer do you want to make on your advisor?
My point here is that you can have a significant influence over the sort of relationship you develop with your advisor by becoming conscious of your own needs and deciding on the “role” you want to play as you interact with your advisor and the members of your committee. Think of yourself as an emerging professional, not as a terrified student, and it is likely that you will be treated with greater respect by your advisor and members of your thesis/dissertation committee. Do you want your advisor to continue to function only as your “teacher,” telling you what to do for every step of the process? Most students would not be comfortable with this sort of advisor, and advisors don’t usually want this role, either. Of course, you don’t want to come across as overly confident or arrogant, and unless you are unusually self-directed, you will probably not want an advisor who leaves you completely on your own—you will need advice and assistance at different intervals of the writing process. Aim to come across as confident and diplomatic as you set the tone for the developing relationship.
A Collaborative Partnership
How can you foster a productive working relationship that moves toward a collaborative partnership? Early conversations about ideas for your thesis or dissertation will help your advisor perceive you as a developing scholar and novice member of the discipline. If you have ideas about potential topics, by all means, discuss them during office conferences. You might also ask a possible advisor what he or she thinks are the most important research questions in the discipline or to suggest readings that can help you consider a topic in greater depth. Are there models of theses or dissertations that this particular professor thinks are worth examining? Does the professor expect you to write an annotated bibliography as a way to engage with significant readings? (This can be extremely helpful.)
You might also ask a potential advisor what supervision model he or she usually prefers. Will you be expected to submit each chapter as you write it? And (a more difficult, tricky question) how long does the advisor usually take to return submitted work? How frequently does the advisor like to meet? Is he or she interested in meeting with more than one graduate student at a time? Will you be expected to adhere to a timetable or plan?
Below are some questions you might want to ask a faculty member whom you are thinking of for your advisor. However, I caution you to be judicious in your questioning; no one wants to be bombarded with question after question. Keep these questions in mind and ask them respectfully as an opportunity arises.
• Do you expect your students to have a clear idea for a thesis or dissertation right from the beginning?
• What theoretical or methodological approaches do you think are most important?
• What do you consider to be the most important critical issues in the discipline?
• Do you have particular strategies for organizing and taking notes that you think are especially useful?
• Do you usually show students models of theses or dissertations that you think are especially successful?
• Do you usually instruct students about the components of a proposal and other elements in a thesis or dissertation, such as the review of the literature?
• Do you require students to write an annotated bibliography?
• How do you prefer to structure the writing process? Do you prefer students to submit each chapter as they write them? Or do you prefer to receive larger segments?
• What kind of feedback do you usually provide?
• Do you suggest articles, books, or other resources you think should be included?
• How do you recommend working with other members of a thesis/dissertation committee? Do you think students should submit a copy of each chapter to these members when they submit them to you? Or should they wait to submit a larger segment or a full draft?
Keeping a Graduate Student Log
To maximize the benefit of meeting with your advisor, I suggest that you keep a log or journal that summarizes what has been discussed during each meeting. Each entry need not be long or extensive—a one- to two-page entry written each time that one of these meetings takes place will suffice. Describe what occurred during the meeting—the focus of discussion in terms of both content and suggestions for improving the writing. Include a date for the next meeting and a short list of goals to be accomplished by that time. After composing each entry, send a copy to your advisor and encourage him or her to modify it as appropriate. The advisor will find this strategy helpful as well because it will allow him or her to recall what was discussed before the next meeting takes place.
When You Need to Replace Your Advisor
Occasionally, a graduate student may need to replace an advisor, a most unpleasant and emotionally stressful task. Perhaps the advisor has been promoted to a new administrative position and no longer has time to spend on a thesis or dissertation. Sometimes professors are so busy that they don’t return phone calls or drafts of chapters. Sometimes the relationship just doesn’t work, for personal or ideological reasons.
Fortunately, the need to replace an advisor doesn’t happen very often. But if you find that your advisor is simply not working with you, it may be time for a replacement. How do you do this? Once again, proceed with caution, consulting people in your department who may have had experience in this matter. Fitzpatrick, Secrist, and Wright suggest that you write a letter, being as diplomatic and gracious as possible. Be respectful, citing the reason(s) for your decision politely and carefully. Although you may be tempted to vent your anger or disappointment in inflammatory statements, I urge you to refrain from doing so—do not burn any bridges. Some day this professor might be in a position of power that could affect your career.
The Thesis/Dissertation Committee
Selecting an advisor is an important decision. But the thesis/dissertation committee also has an important role.
Choosing Your Committee
In selecting other members of your committee, you likely will be limited by departmental requirements, and you may not have as much choice as you have in selecting your primary advisor. Still, I suggest that you consider the same factors for committee members as those for your advisor. Although second and third readers don’t usually play as crucial a role as the primary advisor, I have heard of cases in which one member can significantly hold up the process of completing a thesis or dissertation. In one particularly horrendous case, a third member permanently prevented a graduate student from ever completing his degree! Fortunately, that rarely happens.
Working with Your Committee
The emphasis on the word with in the subtitle here calls attention to the diplomacy that is sometimes necessary when working with the various members of your committee and the importance of avoiding arguments, if possible. Each committee member might have a particular approach to your topic that he or she will want to see included, and sometimes these approaches can conflict. Or problems can arise between a graduate student and a committee member simply because of personal chemistry or just plain bad luck. But some of them can be avoided if you keep in mind the following three maxims:
- Make sure that committee members remain aware of your existence.
- Give committee members enough time to read drafts and suggest revisions.
- Keep your eye on your ultimate goal: to complete your thesis or dissertation.
Maxim #1: Make Sure Committee Members Remain Aware of Your Existence
The extent to which each committee member is directly involved in the writing of your thesis or dissertation will vary according to your discipline, institution, department, and country; you should ask your advisor what sort of contact with other committee members he or she recommends. David Sternberg recommends that a candidate present his or her unfolding work “chapter by chapter, for approval to as many committee members as possible (again, preferably to all of them, but always to the advisor and second most interested faculty member)” (139), but I don’t necessarily agree with that recommendation. A developing first draft may need considerable revision, and an advisor may prefer that you make necessary changes before submitting your work to other members of the committee. My own policy for advising is to work with my students through several drafts; only then do I suggest that they give a copy to other readers. Most second and third readers do not want to read drafts in a relatively unfinished stage.
Whether or not you submit chapters or early drafts to committee members, it is important that you stay in touch with them. Some graduate students become so immersed in research and writing that they disappear from the department, showing up again only when they need their work read or a signature on a form. Sometimes students are unwilling to show their developing work to anyone, except perhaps to their advisors, an understandable reluctance. However, it is really important that you keep committee members aware of your existence and remain a citizen of your department. Phone calls, emails, and brief visits to discuss progress will maximize committee members’ interest in your project. In contrast, if you have “disappeared” from the department and then suddenly thrust a “completed” thesis or dissertation into committee members’ hands with a request to read it and get back to you in a few days, you are likely to generate hostility and resistance—sometimes refusal.
Maxim #2: Give Committee Members Enough Time to Read Drafts and Suggest Revisions
Maxim #2 may seem self-evident, but graduate students sometimes have been working so closely with their advisors that they forget about obtaining input from other committee members. As you keep in touch with your committee, ask the members when they would like to receive drafts and how much time they would like before getting back to you. Also make sure that you have left enough time for yourself to make perhaps unanticipated revisions. Each member is likely to have at least a few suggestions, and I strongly encourage you to take their advice as best you can. This is not the time to stamp your feet and refuse to do as you are asked. Unless a suggestion is blatantly antithetical to your beliefs, goals, ethics, and scholarly integrity, I do not recommend saying, “I don’t want to make this change because it would seriously compromise my ideas.” If you have reservations about suggestions from other members of the committee, discuss them with your advisor and work out some form of negotiated approach. It is the advisor’s job to help you deal with potentially difficult committee members, so do not attempt to do this on your own. As a graduate student in the process of completing a thesis or dissertation, you are at a vulnerable stage in your career, and it is important that you not put yourself in jeopardy before your work is signed and filed.
Maxim #3: Keep Your Eye on Your Ultimate Goal: to Complete Your Thesis or Dissertation
Negotiating your revisions will enable you to fulfill maxim #3—that is, to finish the thesis or dissertation and get your degree as expediently as possible. In this context, it is important to remind yourself that your thesis or dissertation does not have to be perfect. It is not your magnum opus, or your life’s work. Do what is necessary to earn your committee’s approval; if you want to make changes to it after you graduate, you will have the opportunity to do so without jeopardizing the possibility of receiving your degree.
The worst story I ever heard in this context concerned a friend of mine whose third reader wanted him to make certain changes to his dissertation. Because he didn’t agree with those suggestions, he decided to eliminate this member from the committee in favor of another one who, he thought, would be more sympathetic to his original approach. To his surprise and consternation, the new third member also refused to approve the dissertation (for different reasons). Even worse was that his particular university had a “two strikes” rule that prevented my friend from ever completing his degree, despite appeals and potential lawsuits. Needless to say, this was a terrible blow to his career, and I continue to question the ethics of this decision. Don’t let something like this happen to you. Maximize your chances for completing your degree—that is, present yourself as pleasant, respectful, intelligent, professional, concerned, hardworking, and attentive to detail, but not bothersome, arrogant, or stubborn. Do what is necessary to navigate suggestions for revisions and enlist your advisor to help you decide what to do if there are conflicting opinions. Remember, the goal is to finish the degree, not to write the culminating work of your life.
With your eye on the final goal, remember that persistence will ultimately win the day. If one of your committee members or your advisor severely criticizes your work, do not give in to despair and say, “Forget it. I might as well give up.” Instead, express gratitude for the input, clarify uncertainties, make the necessary revisions, and resubmit the text—promptly. If it still needs further revision, make those revisions and resubmit. If you keep revising and resubmitting, you will eventually manage to fulfill the necessary expectations, and then—oh, glorious day—you will be finished!
Free at last, I smile,
Read for fun, sit in the sun.
Thesis? What is that?
—Ronit Sarig
Works Cited
Connell, R. W. “How to Supervise a Ph.D.” Vestes. 2 (1985): 38–41.
Dysthe, Olga. “Professors as Mediators of Academic Text Cultures.” Written Communication. 19.4 (October 2002): 493–544.
Fitzpatrick, Jacqueline, Jan Secrist, and Debra J. Wright. Secrets for a Successful Dissertation. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1998.
Sternberg, David. How to Complete and Survive a Doctoral Dissertation. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1981.
Weber, Max. “The Social Psychology of the World Religions.” In From Max Weber. Eds. H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1948.
Yeatman, Anna. “Making Supervision Relationships Accountable: Graduate Student Logs.” In Postgraduate Studies/Postgraduate Pedagogy. Eds. Alison Lee and Bill Green. Sydney: Center for Language and Literacy: University of Technology, 1998. 21–30.