Speaker 1: Thank you for checking out this video. My name is Arielle and I'm the founder of Grad Life Grind. I am covering what is a dissertation committee today. That's an important question that you may have if you're a current or future graduate student. I know that I personally just asked my dissertation advisor a few weeks ago not just what's a dissertation committee but what does each person do and I'm really glad that you've checked out this video. I hope that you'll tune into the other videos that I have in my dissertation series and I also hope that you'll subscribe to my channel so that you can stay up to date not just on my dissertation journey but also on all other things grad school related and I have a ton of grad school application resources if you are someone who's applying. But let's get into the committee stuff. So I knew that I would have to have a dissertation committee because I've heard this before as I've navigated academia. Being a first generation student, I kind of just learn things by listening and I've been doing this for a while. I've been doing this for a while now. I've been doing this for a while now. I've been doing this for a while now. I've been doing this for a while now. I've been asking questions because it's not something that comes naturally to me or is common knowledge to me. So I've heard through friends and other faculty that I need to have a dissertation committee and usually it's three people. So part of my goals for this summer as I was preparing my dissertation proposal, I wanted to think about who I wanted on my dissertation committee and what the expected contributions would be. And that's a goal that I set because my dissertation advisor gave me a timeline for preparing your proposal and what you should do quarter by quarter since we're on a quarter system and not a semester system. And one of the things on there was brainstorm who you might want to have on your committee and what you expect them to contribute. So she and I met and I was like, what should I expect them to contribute? And that was a helpful question because I need to know that in order to pick the right faculty members, right? So it turns out that a dissertation committee consists of faculty members and faculty members. So I'm going to help you along your dissertation process and what they do really depends. So typically the people that you have on your committee include your advisor. So the person whose lab that you work in and two to three other faculty members who have some sort of expertise in what you're doing. And that may vary. So I'm interested in domestic violence within the Latinx community and I'm really passionate about working with Latinx women, especially mothers who have been exposed to intimate partner violence. So I'm going to help you along your dissertation process and domestic violence. My advisor has expertise in maternal mental health and she focuses on pregnancy and postpartum depression and things like that. So our overlap is that she works a lot with Latinx women. She works with mothers. So that's kind of how I ended up wanting to work with her. So she's definitely going to be on my dissertation committee. She'll probably be my dissertation chair because she's my advisor and she'll be the one who's doing the bulk of the editing and working through the ideas of my dissertation with me. So we're meeting right now on a bi-weekly basis to go over my dissertation proposal draft as I'm starting to prepare that. And she's going to be the one that's going to do the majority of edits, looking through not just what I've written, but how I'm thinking about my study, my methodology, the theory behind it, and hopefully pushing me to improve my study as much as possible. Now, that's the way that she and I work together, meeting regularly, you know, getting a lot of feedback. And not all dissertation chairs or dissertation advisors are like that. Some people are way more hands-off and hopefully you have an advisor if you're in this process. Hopefully you have an advisor that works in a way that is compatible with you. Aside from the dissertation chair or primary advisor, there's usually a couple other people who are involved. And you choose those faculty members based on what you think you might need. So when my advisor and I talked about, we were thinking about people who would have some expertise in the kind of study that I'm doing. So somebody who works with trauma would be good for my study since we're doing work related to domestic violence. Someone who has experience with domestic violence or working with traumatized women in some capacity. There's also a cultural element. So anyone who does cultural adaptations of interventions or has worked with BIPOC communities in some capacity and someone who understands what it means to adapt studies or replicate studies with different populations. So those are kind of the ideas you would be thinking of if you're running a study related to depression and you're working with kids and you're also working on a study that's going to test whether an assessment is useful. Then you might want to find a dissertation advisor who works with depression or one who works with children or a committee member who has experience with assessment studies. So obviously, you want them to have some kind of overlap. The other thing to consider when you're thinking about expected contribution, and this is just from the feedback that I've gotten recently, I don't know everything about this process, but how involved that committee member can or can be or you want them to be. So when you ask someone to be on your dissertation committee, you might want to already have an idea of, okay, I want to make sure that you read every edit or every draft. I want you to be on your dissertation committee. I want you to be on your dissertation committee. I want you to meet with me once a semester, things like that. And they may say yes or no, depending on what they're able to give or how they normally work with students. So you can expect for people on your committee to read your drafts, give you feedback on the methodology, basically push you to make your study better. At least that's what you would want. I think I'm hoping to find committee members who have expertise in what I'm hoping to do in some capacity, at least having expertise in a part of what I'm doing. I'm hoping that they'll be involved and hands-on and want to give me feedback because a lot of what you learn in graduate school related to research is during this process. So yes, I've sat through classes about statistics and I've sat through classes about research methods, but this is the time when I'm going to be learning how to really improve my writing, how to really improve my scientific thinking. And I prefer to have advisors who are going to be hands-on, committee members who are going to be hands-on. Not everyone is like that. And I know that some of you are going to be hands-on, but some of the people that I thought of asking, I was like, maybe I won't ask them because they might be more hands-off. And it really just depends on what suits you. So committee members are really there to give you feedback, to give advice or to push you in your thinking and to help with your writing, things like that. And I think that each committee member probably contributes something special and unique. It's kind of like recommendation letters. So I do a lot of content about grad school applications. And one of the things that I think is really important is that I'm going to have writers for your recommendations who are going to contribute something unique to your profile as an applicant. And I think that I'm going with the same line of thinking for my committee. I may want someone who's really going to push me in the methodology. I might want someone who's really going to help me hone in on the trauma aspect. And I might have another committee member who's really great with statistics and is going to help me make sure that it's strong in terms of my analysis. So serving a different function would be nice for me. And I'm still thinking through. I have a list of people who I am going to consider asking. But it's a process and I also have to have backups in the case any of these people say no. But that's basically what a dissertation committee looks like. It's people who are going to be there, hopefully, to give feedback throughout your process. But more importantly, they're going to be there at your defense. And they're going to be the people who are in the room when you become doctor, whatever. So that's super exciting. I'm not the expert on this. So if you know more about this topic, if you've already written a dissertation, and you're watching this video, let me know in the comments if there's more information that I didn't include here. I don't know everything because this channel is really about sharing what I learn as I'm learning it and putting information out there that I wish I would have had in the past or further along in my journey. So if there's anything that you know about the dissertation process, please share it in the comments. If there's anything also that you would like to learn or hear about related to the dissertation process as I'm going through it that I can cover in a future video, please also comment and let me know. In order to stay up to date with my dissertation process, please be sure to subscribe to my channel and also connect with me on other platforms. I'm on Instagram, on TikTok. I have a blog. I have a store where you can buy Grad Life Grind merch. I spend a lot of time making sure that I can provide mostly free content to you so that I can help you along your grad school journey, whether you're applying or you have a degree. So if you have any questions, please let me know in the comments. And I'll see you in the next video. Bye. I hope to apply in the future to graduate school or you're already a graduate student. I aim to help you as much as I can and also document my experience. So thank you so much for watching this video. I hope you'll be back soon. Take care.