Are Your Dissertation Committee Members Trying to Fail You?

I'm Dr. Steve Tippins, and I've sat on over 400 dissertation defenses. Today, when I, I want to talk about the different archetypes of committee members who show up at defenses and how to deal with them and how to respond to what they are asking/doing. Some types I haven't named them, but yeah, there are people who show up at these types of defenses. So you're gonna run into every once in a while a committee member who hasn't read much of your dissertation. And this person shows up in a number of ways, but predominantly it's the person who finds an area of your work that they're interested in and the rest of it they haven't read. So you'll see this before the defense in comments, like they've only commented on a certain section of your methodology or something about your literature review. And those people are going to ask those types of questions. At your defense. And then pretty much they're either going to be silent for everything else, or they're going to ask a question that shows they haven't read it. Now, if they've been around a while, they aren't going to ask that question because they know it reflects poorly on them. But if they're relatively new as a committee member, they may ask that. And, you know, your response to that type of question is, thank you for that question, As outlined in Chapter 3 or 4 or 2, whichever one it is, basically answer their question generically, but you can, you're basically telling them it's in the document. Okay. Now the other area is the area they're interested in. Many times they aren't going to ask questions if you set up your defense in a way to answer their questions ahead of time. So, you know, they've concentrated on certain things so that you make sure that's part of your defense presentation. Then they get that answered. Now, a variation of the person who hasn't read is the person who isn't paying attention. And we find this more often now because of Zoom defenses where everyone is on Zoom. That means if you don't keep control of the defense, they're checking out. They're, you know, booking their next flight or checking when their kid's baseball game is or something like that because you can do that. Nobody knows what your screen is doing. So you can do that as a committee member and then jump back in. But what that means is they might have missed things. So you may have to catch them up. The committee member who uses your defense to fight a battle with someone else or try to show how important they are over someone else. This happens, which is why first you want to make sure when you design your committee that they get along, if at all possible, so you avoid this from happening. But the way it will happen is, and you may know it's coming because of comments on your document as you're moving forward and you're getting different comments from, let's say, two different people, and they're wanting maybe even opposite answers. And you've navigated that, you get to the defense, and now I get a chance to see these people go at each other. Hopefully, again, it doesn't happen, but the way it might happen is Professor A might make a response and then say, "Well, what do you think, Professor B?" So basically baiting them in to a discussion about something that they feel strongly about or feel like they've got the upper hand on. If you know that this may happen, this is where your chair is vitally important. Hopefully your chair is not one of the two, but your chair— you need to have discussions with your chair saying, I'm concerned that Professors A and B might use this as an opportunity to air air their griefs or grievances, excuse me, air their grievances about each other or their research or, you know, whatever it is. I once knew somebody who had a husband and wife on their committee, and then they were in the process of a divorce during this person's dissertation journey. What happened eventually was one of them dropped off the committee because they just didn't want to do it with each other, but he had a big fear that there was going to be a huge battle at the defense that had nothing to do with his defense. Now, one of the things you have in your favor, especially at schools that grant tenure, is the ranking system. So if someone is an associate professor and there's someone else who's a professor, the professor can't get promoted anymore, but the associate professor can and is going to need that professor's vote. So hopefully the associate professor will have enough wherewithal to stay out of any battles, but if they do occur, you know, your chair should be stepping in. If your chair doesn't step in, then you have to navigate this, and one of the ways you can navigate this is answering the question that's about your dissertation from Professor A, let's say, and if Professor B asks a question about your dissertation, you answer that, and then anything else that's not your dissertation when you get a chance. These are really interesting points. While they're beyond the scope of the research that the committee approved, so you're putting the onus back on them, saying they approved you to do this in this way. These are things I'd like to look into moving forward. Number 1 is the lazy one. Number 2 is the proxy warrior. Number 3 is the goalpost mover., and this person can be incredibly frustrating. And that's the person who approved it, a path, a way, a type of methodology, certain literature, whatever, and is now saying, no, that's not right. First of all, this is frustrating. Second of all, you know, they let you go ahead. They said you could do this. So the first thing you wanna do is communicate with your chair saying this was approved. I would also check with an advisor at your institution just to see what your options are. But working with your chair saying this was approved by the committee, is this person asking me to go back and redo the study, redo the analysis? Am I going to have to go back through the IRB to get different approval to redo the study? I mean, to what extent are they asking? Sometimes this can happen with somebody who hasn't read it at first or has reconsidered and then said, well, now this is probably a better approach. A way to deal with this is to say, I understand what you're saying. I will put that analysis in the appendix. So I'll, I'll put some time into this. I'll do a different statistic or something like that and put it in the appendix because the committee as a whole approved it being done this way. So, I wanna make sure to satisfy what the committee and the IRB have approved. So, if this comes up at the defense, first of all, it's way too late 'cause they've already approved you to get to the defense. But if this comes up at the defense, this is where you are saying, okay, I understand what you're saying. I hear that you think there may be another way, not a better way, another way to have approached this, and I'm willing to look at that afterwards. However, at this point, I believe it's beyond the scope of this research or beyond the scope of this project. So acknowledging that it is another way, acknowledging that perhaps you will look at it moving forward, but it's not part of this work. And this is where your chair should also be stepping up and supporting you. Or any other supportive member of the committee. The fourth possible committee member you may have is the formalist, and this can manifest in a number of ways, one of which is, "Well, that's not APA. You know, this heading is off, or this citation has a comma in the wrong place or something." They are really— what's important to them is the technical nature of this. And that's fine. You'll just say, "Thank you very much for your comments, and before I turn this into the university, I will make sure to go back through and look at all of your comments." So acknowledge them and then move forward. Now, make sure that it— this is the formalist who's working for your institution and not someone who's working at multiple institutions and using the criteria of a different institution.. So just want to double-check to make sure what they're telling you is actually a requirement at your school, and then it may take a little time to update things for them, but it's just that you can do. They may also have some slightly different interpretations. Look, APA is a manual. It is a style. It's not gospel. Some things that used to be more stringent are less stringent now. Some institutions use what I like to call APA light, meaning meaning we're gonna follow APA except over here we're not gonna follow APA. So you wanna make sure that yes, you're doing it, complying with what they're asking for, but you don't have to go any further than that. The tangential questioner. They ask questions that really don't seem to be related to anything, or they may try to take you in a different direction when you're talking about your results or your methodologies or the implications of your study. And really what they're doing is testing you to see if you understand what you've done, if you're confident about what you've done, and understand the limits of what you've done. So they may try to push you a little bit just to test, to make sure that you're ready to join the fraternity of doctors. So understand that's what they're doing and be confident in what you've done, and that should handle what this person is looking for. And the fifth person is the ally. Now, before I talk more about this, know that one person could fill two or three of these roles during a defense, but these are just general archetypes. So the ally is someone who is your supporter, hopefully your chair, but maybe other people as well, saying you've done a good job, you've gotten here. But the ally is also someone who when other questions come up, they may interject to say, "You know, yeah, okay, but I think that's beyond the scope," or, "I think George has done a really good job answering this, and that can be handled in the future." The ally is also someone who, when they get to the debating after you've done your presentation and they've asked you to leave the room or turn off your Zoom for a while or whatever they're process is, that person is quietly or even loudly supporting you when you're not there. You will see an ally show up and you'll know that a person is an ally moving forward during your entire process because they're the person who's saying, "Good job," or, "I like where you're going with this," or may tell you, "Look, I'm on your side. I'll give you minor corrections, but I want you to finish." So those are the people who, you know, when something gets tough and you ask a question, you might want to just look at them if you're all in the room together. Look for support from them because it's really nice to have someone smiling and nodding, saying, "Good job." And if you need any support, join the free dissertation help community. Just click the link in the description.