Hi Dap: First of all, for the Master's degree, it is usually much simpler. I did go the separate Master's then PhD route because I didn't have the confidence to go directly into a PhD program (which in retrospect was quite silly).
The master's degree was from a Cal State school (Long Beach) and there was one major professor and two others from the department and that was the entire committee. The PhD was from the University of Southern California. I was under the guidance of a Major Professor who advised my research. At that time, and I believe it has become more widespread, the program did to accept students as such, but a professor would take a look at the applicant pool. If s/he had funding for a research assistant then s/he could take on a new student and accept a new student into the program. As such, I immediately became his research assistant and it was expected that my dissertation would follow directly from his research program, which it did. For the dissertation I had to pick a member of the department in consultation with my major professor to be one person for the committee. He picked another. I seem to remember there was one other person and I don't know how that person was picked. (Sorry, it was 30 years ago!) and finally there was a person from a different department but the same institution. Everyone I knew had the same mix of people. I believe my outside person was from educational psychology--frankly, I never met him/her and don't remember any more. I suppose I could look up my dissertation to remind myself. I do remember that my area was cognitive and there was another cognitive person on my committee and a statistician (ironic as I believe I completely forgot how to do stats thanks to him. Sigh; another story completely). I believe that at the time, at least, my experience was fairly standard. I do know that the entire committee was in close communication every step of the way so that there were no surprises at the end. I can see where some other arrangements might be difficult. I have served as an outside member on a dissertation in Malaysia and kept wondering when I would feel a bit more collegial involvement but there never was any. I felt a bit like a semi-blind outside reviewer, honestly. I tried to make my feedback as interactive as possible and they must have felt that was odd on my part! Oh well... Good luck. Annette Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph. D. Professor, Psychological Sciences University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=18613 or send a blank email to leave-18613-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
