Problematic Committee Member?

[RNadine21]

Sooo background on this person....he's on my program's faculty list but is not currently in the state. He basically ended up on my committee because he was on the grant proposal for my project. My advisor outright told me that he might be an issue but that she'd do her best to referee. First red flag. When I told older friends in the program that this person is on my committee, I got a "Good luck with that" reaction. Second flag. I physically met him for the first time during my comprehensive oral exam, and he was very nice. He suggested books to read and sent me papers to help with my literature review. This left me confused with everyone's reactions.

I finished my lit review two weeks ago and sent it out to my committee. Days later my advisor mentioned that this person emailed her with comments and to look out for an email myself. Days pass, and at this point I've written a good chunk of my thesis proposal but I need comments to move forward. I finally ask my advisor for the comments she got since I never got an email from the person, so she forwards it.

It basically says that my lit review was nowhere near good enough. That's fine....except there's nothing telling me how to fix it. It mentions that I don't have an understanding of why my project was funded....because this is a literature review, not my proposal (my proposal does have a section on significance - correct me if I'm wrong in thinking that doesn't have to be in a lit review). It says that I was wrong in saying my species is found in the Gulf of Mexico. Indeed it isn't - I said it's in the Gulf of St. Lawrence (I went right to my paper to see if he was right). The email itself was difficult to decipher - bad grammer, different fonts, random highlighting. Now I'm sitting here wondering how in depth he read my paper and with no direction for fixing it. I know I should email him, but I don't even know what to say.

[ktel]

Ah sounds very similar to someone I recently worked with. He lived in the East, and I'm in the West, so we could only communicate via phone or e-mail. He would only correspond with us at his convenience, and would often leave questions unanswered for weeks. When we would send him reports, his comments made it clear that he had only read sections of the report. He would often berate us for not doing a good enough job, however would not provide us with the data and information we needed to do our job. While the issue was never fully resolved, these were the things we did to try to help:

- First of all, since he was never very polite or respectful to us, my e-mails, while always professional, were often somewhat ruder in tone than one might typically expect.

- When he would make comments without reading the report, I would point him to all the sections in the report where he could find answers, obviously suggesting I knew he didn't read it.

- When berating us about the quality of our work, I would suggest to him how his uncooperativeness was preventing us from completing the task

- Since it was for a 4th year undergrad course, we had an advisor at my school for the project. On more than one occasion he had to step in, as the client clearly respected him more than us.

Ultimately we just had to accept that it was what it was. I'm just happy the project is done with.

[Eigen]

Is it possible to swap him out for someone else at this stage?

Honestly, from my understanding, most of the "committee wrangling" of this nature should be up to the PI- I would sit down and talk with yours, and see what they suggest. If he truly isn't returning feedback you need, that might be enough for you and your PI to go to the department head about swapping him out with someone that's actually at the school.

[runonsentence]

The "good" news is that you're not months and months into your thesis at this point..it sounds like you've gotten as far as writing the lit review, correct? Perhaps this means it wouldn't be amiss to take Eigen's advice and talk to your PI about swapping this person out.

It'll make you feel better in the end not to have your thesis hinging on three red flags.

[Sigaba]

MOO, one of the first things you should do is take down all information in your profile/signature that this person could use against you. Do not write anything on line about this person that you'd not say to his face or would be uncomfortable reading on the front page of the New York Times.

Next, I recommend that you ask your advisor what she thinks of the substantive portions of the comments. Concurrently, take yet another look at the comments from a disinterested point of view. Separate how you feel about the guy from what you think he's trying to tell you.

Then, develop a plan to address the alleged deficiencies in the literature review. If you can make the corrections, do so. If you think the corrections are unnecessary, think about ways you can tell him "no." This last option will require as much tact as you can muster.

Finally, going forward, consider the value of taking with a five pound bag of salt what people say (good or bad) about academics. Keep in mind that every relationship is different. In my experience, the professors that made students exceptionally wary have been the ones I've gotten along with the best.

Edited August 5, 2011 by Sigaba

[RNadine21]

Sigaba, thanks for the reminder/tip. I wrote something else unrelated today and realized my signature is pretty incriminating so I tweaked it.

I think this caught me more off guard exactly because I was taking all the negative comments with a grain of salt. I wasn't trying to form an opinion until I interacted with this person myself. But this person actually pulled a similar move today so I might just put on the big girl pants and deal with him as head-on as possible (since again, I'm hearing about the problem from my adviser and not from the person directly).