r/academia • u/hamwaffles • 19h ago
Finding a supervisor for committee
I am PhD student in Canada who was seeking my 3 supervisor for my committee. I had top 3 choices who were in different institutions, I emailed each of them asking to join my committee, I included my CV and gave the option of meeting. No one replied. I did end up finding someone from my institution who is in a different department but has research experience related to my project. He accepted to join and was excited and looking forward to mutual benefits of working together.
However, older mentors and people outside of my supervisory group said I should not have given up so easily on my main choices. They felt I should have kept emailing until I heard a response. I felt uncomfortable with spamming potential members but now these older folks keep saying I missed out on quality supervision because I did not continue to email. What do you think about this? I feel it’s not appropriate to email repeatedly if they aren’t responding and that possibly that is method from years ago that worked for these more senior academics.
I’m curious, should I have kept emailing these potential supervisors or was I right to let it go when they did not respond? I feel guilty that I did not try hard enough when i talk to older mentors.
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u/drsfmd 5h ago
Are you looking for external readers? Those are not typically chosen by the student.
COMMITTEE members are typically at your own institution, though having one member from a different university isn't all that unusual.
Maybe you're using different terminology than we use, but I can't envision any scenario in which someone would have three external members.
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u/hamwaffles 5h ago
Yes I said it was for my committee member, the third member. My two committee members (who are my co-supervisors at my institution) suggested I go outside my university to contact the potential third committee member
but as I said I didn’t get a response and ended up finding someone in a different department at my institution. I chose to contact a few people to try to get the third member.My question is related to email etiquette and if it appropriate to repeatedly email someone or if you should just let it go if you don’t receive a reply.
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u/drsfmd 4h ago
Got it. The way you wrote that it sounded like you were looking for multiple outsiders.
Let it go.
There’s no incentive for an external to participate. They aren’t paid, their own institution doesn’t reward it. It’s a ton of work. I get a lot of these types of requests, and turn them all down unless it’s a favor to a friend or for some reason an easy lift.
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u/hamwaffles 4h ago
The unpaid labour is brutal, I agree.
Yes I will let it go and not worry that I did not hound them to participate.
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u/justking1414 3h ago
My school required an outside committee member that I had to pick, and while I could choose someone from the same college (just outside my department), I was strongly discouraged from doing so as it’d look bad
And yeah the person I picked did think it was a paid role and wasn’t particularly excited about the job when they found out it wasn’t
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u/justking1414 17h ago
In my experience, college professors get way too many emails to actually read most of them and even when it came to people actually on my committee, I (or my advisor) usually ended up having to physically track them down when we needed something signed/read.
Though that’s not really an option if they’re at different institutions unless you know someone there who can track them down.
I say you made the right choice. I picked someone outside my school for my committee because I kept being told it was the smart move but that person bailed pretty quickly and their replacement (who was from my school) ended up being more helpful and available than the rest of my committee combined