Committee Meeting Guide and Tips
First Committee Meeting:
GOAL: To determine an appropriate project for your degree (MSc or PhD) that has achievable objectives
- Plan to have this within your first year to help focus your project (even if you feel that you don’t have enough data)
- Discuss suitable committee members with your supervisor, send emails requests (Doodle polls work best to decide on the best meeting day) and book a meeting room
- Prepare a presentation outlining your achievements, research rationale, aims of the thesis, data collected so far and an estimated timeline for completion
Following Committee Meetings:
GOAL: To assess your productivity, discuss research strategy and critique results
- Have you generated useful data and made progress on your thesis?
- Could your results be interpreted differently? Are there key experiments missing?
- Have you published? Collaborated? Found hurdles that need to be overcome?
- What research do you plan to do next? What skills will you need to be successful?
- Will you transfer to PhD? Have you completed the comprehensive exam?
- Are you on track to graduate according to your timeline?
Comprehensive Exam:
GOAL: To examine your ability to write, understand and communicate your research
- Choose an examination committee, including an external examiner
- Ask your examiners to send you papers or areas of research to study; expect to know their research well
- Give yourself time away from the lab to study (usually 2 weeks) and practice answering questions with your lab mates
- Write a research proposal and submit to your committee at least 1 week prior to your exam
- Prepare a 20 minute talk outlining your proposal
Final Committee Meeting:
GOAL: To ask for permission to write your thesis and graduate
- How does one graduate? This is up for discussion between you, your supervisor and your committee. Every student is different and every degree is different.
- Start writing your thesis early and follow the format guidelines set by FoGs
- Have a plan for what you expect from your degree and what you’d like to do next