A graduate committee is your official team of mentors and, effectively, instructors, as you move through your graduate program. These are the people that assess your progress, administer examinations, and ultimately sign the paperwork to award your degree, so chosing people that both have expertise in what you're doing AND you have a good rapport with is important. There's a few rules about grad committees in BSCI programs at Kent State- namely, they must be composed of MAJORITY of members from the BSCI department. PhD committees also must contain at least ONE 'outside dicipline' member. For really interdiciplinary people (like the folks in my lab tend to be!), the challenge is balancing your interdiciplinary advising needs with constraint #1. These 'outside dicipline' people can be from other departments at Kent, other universities, or experts in government or industry that hold PhDs. The catch is we need to appoint them as 'graduate faculty' so there's a bit of paperwork involved if we go farther afield, and other academics tend to be most familiar with the procedures in grad advising.
The first member of your committee is your advisor. If you're reading this, that's probably Christie. This is your on-the-ground mentor- this is typically the person that provides the space and front-line advising. You probably knew this (and her!) going in. Your advisor is the one who is ultimately responsible for the administration of your program and the quality of the work you send out into the world while enrolled in the program.
For master's students, you need to have 3 (and rarely, 4) faculty members on your committee. Your advisor is 1, and you need to select at LEAST TWO other members of the BSCI graduate faculty to sit on your committee as the second and third. Your fourth member can be from BSCI, or can be an external person.
For doctoral students, your committee starts in basically the same form, with the same constraints, as a master's student, with 3, and rarely four members. After you pass your candidacy exam, you will be required to add one additional member- this is when most students add the external person because the paperwork works out nicer.
Work with your advisor to identify a list of people you'd like to ask to be on your committee. It's a good idea to have an alternate or two in mind, because sometimes even the perfect fit faculty member will have too many other commitments and need to say no. Usually students first aproach asking somone to be on their committee by email, and requesting a meeting. In that email, you'll want to introduce yourself, breifly describe your project, and explain why you'd like that person to be on your committee. The person in question may agree right away, they might want to have a meeting to learn more, or they might say no. If a no comes up at any time, dust yourself off, and move down the list. It's not personal! It's just faculty can get really busy.
Once you have a committee, you're going to need to meet with them regularly. Department rules say you should meet with them all together at least once a year, but it certainly doesn't hurt to meet more often than that (okay it might, if you're not using your time well- but we'll cover that in this section).
Committee meetings are initiated by, and generally led by the student. They are for you to update your committee about where you are, get advice about next steps, and practicing talking about your work (and committee meetings are in addition to particular program meetings which are held for very particular milestones- candidacy exams, prospectus, and the like, though sometimes meetings are combined for efficiency).
The main things you need to think about when putting together a committee meeting are scheduling, establishing goals of the meeting, and providing information to update your committee on the progress of the project.
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First is scheduling. This is always a bit hard- you are herding cats. Use a scheduling poll, give many options. Expect to give a lead time of at LEAST two weeks. I'm sorry, I know myself and I know my colleagues and we're hard to pin down. Virtual and hybrid meetings are fine, despite what anyone says. If they need to be 100% in person there is a good chance scheduling will be impossible- so think flexibly. If you need to book a room, don't forget to do so- and tell everyone where you'll meet.
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Next is establishing goals. Please cirulate an agenda/ meeting goals and any documents you'd like the committee to review at least a week before the meeting. This helps set the tone and make sure we get to the things we need to get to in the time alotted. Not sure what your goals are? Use this degree timeline to help sketch that out.
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Finally, run the meeting. This usually works best if you prepare some kind of presentation: basically, put together some slides to tell your committee what you've been up to, what you've found, what your next steps are, and what your timeline is for completion. This should combine both the science you're doing and the programmatic milestones that you're aiming to hit. Ask lots of questions and encourage the committee to ask lots as well- ideally this is a conversation, but with structure. Committees are happiest when they can both see that the student has direction, and can take re-direction, but also when they feel useful- so lean into this group of experts to help you form your project. Think about your goals in the near and far term and talk about them in the context of how your project and your program help you get there.
A special note: for your first committee meeting, it's possible that you and the committee don't know each other well, so it's a good idea to do a round of introductions. Start with introducing yourself, give a bit of your background, and what your overarching goals are, and invite each committee member to introduce themselves too to get started. Icebreaker!
Happy meetings!