As part of preparing your dissertation or master’s thesis, selecting the committee that will serve as your supervisor is an essential step. During the process of completing the dissertation or master’s thesis, the chairperson of the dissertation committee usually has a significant amount of power and influence. This is why selecting the chairperson of your project is one of the most important decisions you need to make. During the dissertation or master’s thesis writing process, you’ll collaborate with your chair and committee to define your topic, develop your proposal, conduct your research, and write your dissertation or master’s thesis. Ultimately, the quality of your project will be judged by your committee. There are some suggestions presented regarding selecting a dissertation or thesis chair and other members of your committee. The role of the chair should be considered before choosing a faculty member as your chairperson. As mentioned previously, your chair will have broad power and influence over the dissertation or thesis process. If you are looking for report writers while you are struggling with reports, hire a report writing service to provide you with assistance.
However, some general functions of the chair are generally the same, regardless of the institution, the department, or the chairperson.
- The chairperson must first approve your dissertation or thesis topic.
- Secondly, the chairperson will approve after consulting with you and the other committee members.
- Thirdly, the dissertation chairperson must approve every section, chapter, and line within the dissertation.
- Fourth, the chairperson determines how committee members will participate in the dissertation or thesis.
- Fifth, the chairperson is responsible for determining when the defense of your dissertation or master’s thesis is ready to begin.
- The final decision regarding whether you will be awarded the degree rests with the chairperson.
It has become standard practice for departments to have rules concerning who may and cannot be a dissertation or thesis chairperson. In some universities, the dissertation chair is only allowed to teach graduate courses and who is part of the graduate faculty; that is, someone who has adequate, recent publication records and teaches graduate courses at that institution as the rationale behind these rules is that faculty members who do not have active research programs’ will fail to have the expertise needed to guide the development of a doctoral research project. There may not be as many restrictions concerning who is allowed to chair master’s theses regarding doctoral dissertations. Learn your institution’s policies as soon as possible on who can and cannot act as dissertation chairs.
Composition And Role Of The Committee
It is up to each institution’s policy and the degree awarded to determine these committees’ size, composition, and role. An additional number of faculty members is usually added to the committee and the chair. An average thesis committee consists of three members, while a dissertation committee comprises three to five members. There are sometimes requirements that the committee members, at least one of whom must be an outsider to the student’s major department. Depending on the university, a majority of committee members must be graduate faculty members. A graduate faculty member is usually required to be the committee chair in most institutions. The committee usually oversees the entire process from the time the proposal is submitted to when the dissertation or master’s thesis is satisfactorily completed.
Criteria To Consider In Selecting A Chair
In choosing a chair, you must take into account the following factors:
- expertise
- accessibility
- success
- Approaches to methodology
We will discuss each of them, in turn, as to how important it is.
Expertise
It would be ideal if you could find a chair who possesses expertise in the field you are interested in. Perhaps you should look at some of their publications before deciding. If your chair’s field of expertise is close to the topic you’re working on, then they will be much more qualified to:
- Make a list of the difficulties that you might encounter while you are studying
- Identify relevant literature sources for your topic by guiding you to them
- Guide your data collection and analysis.
Chairs with expertise and an interest in the same area as your topic area will likely devote more time to your work; they will give it a thorough consideration and keep an eye on your progress than a chair with neither knowledge nor interest in the subject at hand.
Accessibility
Several things can make it difficult to have consistent access to a chair throughout your project. Think about these factors when considering someone as a possible chair. There is a possibility that nationally recognized scholars will be too busy with their research activities to devote time to you. There might not be any faculty members available during the summer if they are on nine-month contracts. You may be disrupted by faculty on sabbatical leave. During the project, your faculty member may have goals of taking a position at another university and, consequently, may not be able to assist you during that time. According to your time constraints and projections for completion, you should consider whether or not the potential chairs are completely accessible.
Success
It is important to consider whether a chair successfully brings students to graduation. Due to your concern with completing your studies, you might count the percentage of students who have been successful in completing their studies under the chair; that is, how many students with the chair have been successful in earning their degrees. Considering this criterion cautiously is necessary since some faculty members cannot speak from experience about whether they have chaired a doctoral or master’s dissertation.
Attitudes Toward Methodology
There is often a disagreement among faculty members regarding their preferences for certain research methods. Research methods encompass several strategies that are used to collect and analyze data. Among the various methods of classifying research, the feature of choosing qualitative research versus quantitative research makes the greatest distinction. In addition to quantitative and qualitative research, several types of research are designed to answer specific kinds of research questions, and each of them has a different structure.
- Qualitative research uses statistics to analyze numerical data, usually presented in a statistical format.
- Quantitative studies tend to be descriptive (or survey), correlations, causal-comparative, and experimental studies.
The purported benefit of these studies is that they are carried out within a value-free framework, which is claimed to be extremely useful.
