Steve Tippins Ph.D.Helping doctoral students get their dissertation accepted, succeed in their careers, & change the world | Academic Career Advisor | Dissertation Chair & Founder, Beyond PhD Coaching | 35 + years of experience.

Your Chair Ghosted You, Here's Your Next Move

11 Mar 2026 · 1 min

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0:51

In this concise advisory video, Steve Tippins, Ph.D., guides graduate students on how to handle a dissertation chair who has become unresponsive. He recommends first re‑contacting the chair with a clear request for a meeting to discuss expectations. If the chair still does not reply, he advises escalating the issue to departmental advisors or the school’s chair to clarify what support the student should receive. Throughout, he stresses the importance of documenting every communication—dates, content, and response times—to build a formal case that can be used to obtain external committee support or to justify switching to a new chair. Finally, he offers a call‑to‑action: viewers can comment the word “help” to receive a link to a free dissertation help community.

Chapters

If you have tried to be proactive and just aren't getting any responses, I would try to contact again and say, "Can we have a meeting so I can talk about what I can expect and what I'm supposed to do here?" So you can get them on board. Now, every once in a while you get a chair who just doesn't respond at all. That's when you have to talk to advisors at your school or department chairs and say, "What is it I'm supposed to be getting from my chair?" There's a number of universities out there— typically they are distance learning schools— which have parameters. You must respond within 2 weeks or something like that to student inquiries. This is when we start keeping track. I sent them an email on this day. They didn't respond until this time. So you're building a case for getting external to your committee support to moving forward and/or finding a new chair. Drop the word help in the comments and I'll send you the link for our free dissertation help community.