By Dr. Noelle Sterne

Q: It’s time for me to find a dissertation chair. I’m panicked. How?

—Chairless

A: You’re right to have at least a little trepidation. Here’s what a new “doctor” said in a study of how the choice and behavior of chairs affect doctoral students’ satisfactions:

It is impossible to overestimate the significance of the student-advisor relationship. . . . This is both a personal and professional relationship that rivals marriage and parenthood in its complexity, variety and ramifications for the rest of one’s life. (Zhao et al., 2007, p. 263)

That student echoes what many doctoral candidates learn, with ease or agony, during their dissertation years. Your relationship with your chair (sometimes called advisor or supervisor) is absolutely the most important in your entire doctoral trek. In my many years of coaching and advising doctoral candidates, I have seen too often how the “wrong” chair not only delays dissertation completion and graduation but creates much frustration.

If only there were a ChairMatch.com! But until a completely exasperated doctoral candidate, hopefully not ABD, comes up with such a site or app, you have other options. A few universities assign chairs and committees, usually dependent on their (supposedly) light roster of doctoral students.

More commonly, and more progressively, many universities let you choose your chair. But do your homework! You want to avoid musical chairs—changing chairs too often in the hope of an ever better experience (meaning faster approvals).

So, based on the unfortunate experiences of many of my graduate students, here
are some steps you might take to locate the best doctoral chair you can.

Gather Plenty of Information

Collect as much information as you can from as many sources as you can find.

1. Dig out faculty bios. Access the university/division/school/department website for faculty profiles. These should yield much: the professor’s degree-granting institutions, primary research interests, courses taught, publications, presentations, awards, grants, and journal affiliations. Photographs are often included, and you can see if the professor has kind eyes (not infallible, but it helps). Make sure too the professor isn’t on fourteen university committees (and so no time for you).
2. Stomp in the grapevines of your classmates, other peers, and recent doctors. Their insights and observations about chair reliability and consistency, especially in hindsight, can be invaluable.
3.  Talk to peers who are currently working with chairs you are considering. Over the lunch you buy, ask your peers questions. Do you feel comfortable talking with the chair? How promptly does the chair respond? Does the chair remind you about university deadlines? Are the chair’s critiques more substantial than correcting of typos? Do you feel the chair prompts you to think in greater depth about the topic? Does the chair address you at least civilly?
4. Search out enemy literature. Bruce Shore (2014), a longtime and award-winning professor and advisor to doctoral students, wrote a fine book ostensibly for chairs and advisors, The Graduate Advisor Handbook. In a colloquial, engaging style, he shares advice and cautions. You can learn a lot about what to ask for, expect, and stay away from with your chair and committee. Shore’s perspective, revealed in the subtitle, should cheer you on: A Student-Centered Approach.

More Questions About the Chair

What do you really want to know about a chair? Based on the bio you accessed and other doctoral candidates’ experiences, here are some suggestions.

• Does the professor have the time for you?Are your research interests similar?
• Are you devotees of the same methodologies?

  One chair told the student to use a mixed-method approach, a favorite of the chair. Then, after proposal defense and all the rationales for mixed method, the chair changed it to qualitative, with new rationales, methodology, and more delays.

• Will the chair be—or get to be—knowledgeable about the research in your field?
• Will the chair be responsive to your emails and calls (not that you’re going to be a pest)?
• Will the chair critique your drafts in a reasonable time? Some universities specify 2-week turnarounds; unfortunately, this “rule” is rarely followed.
• Will the chair keep track of your drafts?

  Don’t laugh; one client’s chair kept losing her current drafts, confusing unedited with later edited versions, and repeatedly emailing the client for the latest versions.

• Will the chair be available to you for meetings and generous with time—within reason? (At your meetings, you don’t need to recount your life story or history of previous chairs.)
• Will the chair be encouraging but reasonably “hard” in critiques? A chair who is rude challenges your self-esteem (even more than usual, given the entire process) and is unnecessarily thoughtless. But a chair who is too “easy” does you no favors. Later critiques by committee members and university reviewers can shock you, require massive revisions, and delay graduation. More important, “easy” chair critiques don’t elicit your best work.
• Will the chair be clear in instructions?
• Will the chair be consistent in critiques?

  The chair of one of my students required many changes and additions, which the student (and I) did dutifully. Then, in the next draft, the chair deleted some, added others, repositioned others, and required all the changes in only a few days. The student (and I) drafted a tactful, diplomatic reply requesting more time. Finally, the chair agreed.

• Will the chair be professional and friendly in your dealings?

  A student showed me his chair’s frequent snide comments about his abilities on his tracked-change drafts. To my student’s credit, he kept pushing on.

• Will the chair work well with other committee members and “fight” for you with them if necessary?

  Other committee members can have strong feelings about, for instance, a single research site vs. many, a particular theoretical foundation, or any number of other issues. They may “dictate”  extensive changes. But it’s the chair who is the final word and who should stand up for you.

• Will the chair be reasonably stable at the university?

  At a crucial time in one client’s dissertation, his chair left the university abruptly under hushed circumstances. The client had to scrounge for another chair.

• Will the chair help you later in your career?

  Not imperative but a wonderful asset. Chairs write job recommendation letters, alert students about openings, and sometimes invite them to be part of the next grant project.

Chair Characteristics

One university has a checklist of professors’ names and form for students to help them choose their chairs and committees. Some of the characteristics students are asked to specify: supportive or hands-off, highly goal directive or minimally goal directive, soft critiques or sharp. Other characteristics would seem to constitute the perfect members: Gives strong feedback, has a sense of humor, patient, collegial, calming to the candidate, committed to success, nurtures candidate’s self-sufficiency, inspires intellectual growth, enthusiastic, and understands the dissertation and IRB processes, and more. If you haven’t already, consider all of these.

More Questions for You

After all your homework, ask yourself two other crucial questions. What do I want and need in a chair? How do I feel about this faculty member?

Listen inside. You’ve often done this with other things. When you meet new people, you can tell immediately whether you like them or not. When you enter a certain place, you know whether it feels good or not.

If you think you should be reasonable and apply logic (“He’s a well-known tenured professor!”), and if your gut is telling you otherwise, it won’t work. If you stack up all kinds of rational arguments to convince yourself what should be the best choice (“She’s got stellar publications and connections!”), it won’t work. That’s why you really gravitate to the new associate professor who misplaces his glasses and stumbles over his words. But he asks stimulating questions in class and has kindly eyes.

So, gather information, ask the right questions, and suspend your intellect (the only time I’ll advise this). I can’t guarantee you’ll locate the perfect chair, but with these suggestions and your diligence and discernment, you’ll have a better chance of a good, even pleasant, relationship in which you’ll grow academically and personally. And you’ll later remember your chair with gratitude and fondness.

References

Shore, B. M. (2014). The graduate advisor handbook: A student-centered approach. University of Chicago Press.
Zhao, C. M., Golde, M., & McCormack, A. C. (2007). More than a signature: How advisor choice and advisor behaviour affect doctoral student satisfaction. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 31(3), 263-281. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098770701424983