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Navigating the Thesis Years - Student Advice

Suggestions for Thesis Committee Meetings

Orr Barak, Emily Chu, Adam Crystal, Peter Hammerman and Natalie Terry (written fall '03) Several students and faculty members associated with the combined degree program here at Penn have thought about ways in which to increase the efficiency with which our students progress through the thesis years.

Getting Started

When should I have my first meeting?

While grad groups vary in their requirements regarding the timing of meetings, it is generally a good idea (and a program requirement) to have a first meeting no later than six months after passing prelims or joining your thesis lab. Depending upon when you entered your thesis lab, you may have very little data. Don't worry! The first meeting is really about what you plan to do for your thesis. Getting into a pattern of having regular meetings is critical.

How do I form a committee?

You should discuss your desire to have a meeting at least a couple of months in advance with your thesis advisor. At that time you should have some faculty members in mind who you think would be appropriate for your committee. These may be people with expertise in your field who would be helpful regarding specific problems you might face, though having too many "experts" can be dangerous, as they might be too familiar with the field and focus on specific issues important to them that you may not want to address. Including a member who does not work in your field but with whom you have had positive interactions with in the past is a good idea. You should select faculty members who will be willing to disagree with your mentor, especially if you work in a lab with a high profile PI who can intimidate other professors. You should have a mix of junior and senior people, if for no other reason than scheduling any more than two senior people at once is a huge inconvenience, and also for the potential benefits that might be afforded by suggestions offered by scientists at different points in their careers. You should select members who have served on previous committees and have been useful to more senior students. It is also a good idea to incorporate some members who have MDs, as they can be more sensitive to graduation time issues. If you have doubts, check with CD office to see if a person has been on other MD-PhD committees and get in touch with students who had them on their committee.

You will also have to select a committee chair. It is your decision, not theirs. Pick someone you feel comfortable talking to and can stand up to your advisor because they are the go-to person if any problems were to arise with your faculty advisor. Picking a faculty member who already has tenure is a good idea.

What do I need to do before the meeting?

First and foremost, you are responsible for all of the scheduling details regarding your meeting. That means sending out a number of e-mails to sometimes difficult to find PIs and working with several competing schedules to determine an agreeable date and time. You may be lucky here, but it often is the case that meetings have to be scheduled two or so months in advance. Schedule a two hour block and make sure you have the room reserved and the necessary AV equipment booked. Also, you will be expected to provide snacks of some sort as a means of showing respect to the committee members.

It is generally a good idea to provide your committee members with a written document prior to your meeting. This need only be a general outline of your talk, usually no more than a page or two. It should include a synopsis of your project, a summary of what you have done so far and a short description of what you will be presenting. Also, be sure to include any papers or abstracts you have authored in your outline. To the meeting you should bring another hard copy of the outline and manuscripts. The members may not remember to bring them or have read them, so it is helpful to have copies on hand.

How do I organize the meeting?

You should prepare a formal scientific talk (Powerpoint) of roughly 30-60 minutes of material (this depends on how far along you are and how things have been going). It is often helpful, if not critical, to show your presentation to other lab members prior to your meeting. They will often correct problems and ask you "mock" questions to get you prepared. In addition, your mentor should at the very least know what you will be discussing if he or she does not review your slides with you before the meeting. Always introduce yourself at the start of the meeting--who you are, what year you are, when your last meeting was and how long you've been in the lab. Be sure to tell them what the goals of the meeting are at the beginning of your presentation. A fine goal for the first meeting is to introduce them to the system and your hypotheses for your thesis project. As you hit the second or third meeting though, you may want to tell them upfront what your struggles have been, the forks in the road, and where you need their input.

The general slide format should be similar to any scientific talk, though it should be somewhat more deliberate with respect to identifying the question you are investigating and your hypothesis. A thesis committee is very concerned with whether you are focused on a specific question and have formulated testable hypotheses--if you can't articulate these then you are not ready to have a meeting. Graphics slides often work well in presenting your hypothesis/model that you will be addressing in your thesis work. Make sure to spend the time here getting everyone familiar with your talk, as this is a much more general audience than a lab meeting. Also, remember that unless you are interested (and seem to be) in your work, and present it in a concise, easy to follow talk, your thesis panel will become bored and/or annoyed. Your first meeting in particular may consist of a lot of background. That's fine - they will want to see how you are setting up your questions and hypotheses.

The body of the presentation should consist of data slides, but it may be appropriate to include slides of models - or other people's published data (be sure to acknowledge this on the slide as well as orally) in order to present the story more clearly.

There is a temptation to show every single experiment you have ever done in order to impress the committee with how hard you've worked, but this is a bad strategy. Instead, remain focused and show data that are clean, interpretable and controlled, as many committees get bogged down on single slides that show sloppy, inconsistent or uncontrolled data. You should be telling a story, and as such, you should include data to support your story. Pertinent negative experiments are good too, but be sure that you do not show data that detract from your overall point. Every experiment should be explained in the context of why it was done, how it was done and what was learned from it, though detail need not be excruciating, and once your committee trusts you, this can be scaled down. Be sure to have a clear conclusions slide at the end (perhaps going back to your model from your introduction). It is also a good idea to have a "thesis plan" slide which indicates what you have done and how you see your work coming together as chapters of a thesis. One component of this is a summary of where your experiments are taking you in the next six months or so as well as any preliminary data on these fronts. Be specific here, as it is just as important to have presented a focused story as it is to indicate that you will be continuing along a similar logical path. Also, be sure to mention any publications at this point.

There are several elements that comprise an effective meeting. On your end, you should present a clear, focused set of experiments that indicate that you have been working hard, have thought about your project deeply and are making progress towards becoming a successful scientist. If you accomplish these goals, you will be able to remain in control over your thesis and dictate its pace. In addition, you will get more out of your committee, as they will be relieved that they do not have to spend the time figuring out whether you have a hypothesis or not and can instead focus on providing insightful criticism.

What should you expect from your committee?

Ideally, if you have prepared a high quality presentation, your committee should respect your effort and provide you with guidance. However, this is often not the case. Committees differ greatly in their level of helpfulness--some are good at criticizing data, some are good at proposing experiments and some are not good for much. Try to be engaging in your presentation and to make your data seem as interesting as possible to a general audience. Your committee will typically start by interrupting you from time to time to ask you general questions about your project and your hypothesis and then will be critical of some of your data either to point out real flaws or just to see if you can defend yourself. On occasion, a first meeting, especially if you are just getting started, can be fairly informal with little criticism, but this will not remain true as you progress. To this end, do not make points that are not supportable or show data that hurts you. This will result in much argument and wasted time. Your committee may be prove very helpful in keeping you and your PI focused. They are there as a checks and balances on the PI's role in your thesis progression.

When should I have my next meeting? What if things are not going well?

The combined degree office suggests you meet every six months which is a good idea in principle. In reality, you project and your committee members will dictate the intervals between meetings. In the best of all possible worlds, you would have a meeting after you completed each future section of your thesis, though as we all know, there are times when experiments work and times when they do not. Do not avoid your committee if you are having trouble, either with your experiments or your PI (though if the latter is true, a more private setting works better). Some of the best meetings can be "brainstorming" questions in which you present negative data and try to figure out how to steer things in a more positive direction. As long as you are continuing to work hard you will not be faulted for a hypothesis or approach being wrong. However, you should not get in the habit of relying on your committee for help in designing experiments, as that is really the job of people in your lab and using your committee for this purpose is inefficient, especially if done repeatedly.

How do I graduate?

Unfortunately, there is no general rule stipulating what is needed to complete a PhD and different committees have different standards, standards which can be quite high for those wishing to finish in seven years. While the often quoted "two manuscript rule" is perceived to be the standard, this often does not hold up in reality, as the consensus seems to indicate that graduation standards are a function of your success (papers and otherwise), your mentor's comments to your committee, how long you've been in lab, your committee's opinion of you and the feelings of the particular members on your committee. You should be honest with your mentor and committee regarding your timetable for graduation and you should be both sincere and respectful when it comes to discussing it. Always be respectful and try to have the support of your PI before making any specific statements on this subject. If you do feel that you are ready you can be aggressive about it but keep in mind that your interactions with your committee over time will come into play here. On that note, it is generally a good idea to keep them abreast of your progress, particularly with respect to publications, and you should seek these mentors out over time for help or guidance as needed.

Try to set yourself a preliminary finish date. Take into consideration your thesis work as well as how much time you will need in the clinics. For example, you will need, at a minimum, 9 months more of clinics prior to applying for residency programs. If you have absolutely no idea what future specialty you'd like to pursue, this may not be enough time. Here is a sample timeline for completing a thesis in December:

Penultimate committee meeting (March/April) - Try not to bring up desire to complete prior to this meeting. You can ask a sympathetic committee member in a separate meeting if they think it is possible. Go into this committee meeting as any other, but at the end of the meeting, mention that you have a desire to defend in December. They will tell you if this is possible. Ask them for experiments or goals that they would like met for the last committee meeting. Try to meet these goals. At this time, try to get manuscripts prepared and submitted.

Final meeting (September/October) - Prior to meeting, mention that part of the agenda will be to discuss the possibility of defending in December. Bring the permission to defend slip to meeting. Give the meeting as if it is a defense. Include clean data. Avoid negatives. This is not a troubleshooting meeting per se. Mention manuscript status and preparation. Questions to ask: What other experiments? How soon before defense date do you want the dissertation in hand? Can I use manuscripts as dissertation chapters? Following the meeting e-mail all members for December schedules. Establish a two hour block required for the talk as well as the subsequent defense. Reserve a room early.

Dissertation writing - no help here from you committee. Use the dissertations in biomed library as templates. Once completed, bind the dissertation, no alligator clips. Campus Copy Center binds dissertations with plastic spiral spines for about three dollars each. Get a copy for each committee member, your PI, and yourself.

Defense - Just give a good talk. Congratulations, Doc!

Other things to keep in mind:

• Meet with Helene Weinberg a few months before entering clinics. Get schedule ready.
• Re-certify for BLS.
• You may want to sign up for med-250.
• Dissertation chapters will be used as manuscripts. Write them for publication.

Stay sane. Get lots of exercise. Ease yourself off the bench. Doing labwork and writing is difficult.