Committee Involvement

How to ask Katy to be on your graduate thesis committee

Conditions

  • Your research should be something I can substantively comment on.
  • Please schedule all committee meetings well in advance (at least two months).
  • You must have a reproducibility plan for your research that describes how a scientist could reproduce your work. This may involve pointing to data, scripting analysis, version controlling all scripts you use in your work, and recording any details of software that you rely on.
  • You should provide me with yearly updates on your progress.
  • I will need at least two weeks to review any document under 100 pages. For documents over 100 pages, I will need one month.
  • All documents should be provided in PDF format. If you happen to be version controlling the documents you are writing, I am happy to make line comments via GitHub.
  • If I don’t know you well, I may ask to set up a meeting before agreeing to be on your committee.

Asking

If you’re ok with all of this, please write me a pleasant formal email indicating that you have read this information. I’ll need to know:

  • Where I know you from.
  • Your advisor’s name
  • Your topic
  • Your year in school
  • Your general timeline
  • Your expected graduation date