Faculty Advising Committees for Students

University of Colorado at Boulder

Departmnt of Chemistry and Biochemistry


Sharing an Exemplary Element: Advising Committees

Our biochemistry students are required to present a formal seminar on their research and meet with advising committees annually. The advising committees serve to evaluate the student's yearly progress and advancement to degree.


Details of the Faculty Advising Committees

Meetings with advising committees typically begin in the third year, after students complete their qualifying exams. A committee consists of the student's advisor and two other faculty members with similar research interests. The student gives a yearly presentation of their research, followed by a meeting in which the faculty members evaluate the student's progress and provide suggestions for future directions in the research. These meetings are a required part of the biochemistry program, and are the student's responsibility to organize, although the thesis advisor will help enforce that the meetings take place.

Committee Meeting Form
This is the form filled out each year by the student and committee to document the advising meeting and evaluate the student's progress.

Annual Committee Meeting Guidelines
This is a document given to biochemistry students explaining the guidelines for the required Annual Committee Meetings.

What educational purpose do Advising Committees serve?

Advising committees serve students in a variety of ways. First and foremost, mentoring is not solely in the hands of the thesis advisor but is expanded to a group of experts in the student's field. The yearly meeting provides feedback when the student is no longer taking courses or exams, helps keep the student's research efforts on-track, and fosters strong ties between members of the division. Lastly, advising committees are beneficial in the unfortunate circumstance that a student (or advisor) is having difficulty with their relationship and an outside source is needed to evaluate the student's progress to degree.


What data or evidence tells us that this works?

Informal surveys of biochemistry students suggest that this program is well liked and generally helpful, and many students in other divisions have asked that advising committees be implemented for them. Faculty in organic, inorganic and analytical chemistry will start advising committees for students in Spring, 2004.

To further evaluate this program it would be useful to look at time-to-degree before and after this program began, student surveys and alumni feedback.



Reflection from faculty members

"During the third and subsequent years of graduate school, students in the Biochemistry Division meet on a yearly basis with a faculty committee to evaluate progress. The monitoring committee consists of at least three Biochemistry faculty including the thesis advisor. Students present a formal 30 min seminar on their research, which is attended by the monitoring committee members. Students may present their talk in a number of different forums, such as Signaling Supergroup, Bioinformatics Supergroup, RNA Club, Biophysics Supergroup, Biochemistry Retreat, and laboratory group meetings. Within a few weeks after the research talk, the committee meets with the student to discuss progress and outline goals for the next year. Problems or obstacles that interfere with progress of the dissertation are noted. A meeting summary is then written by the committee chair and signed by the student and thesis advisor. In the final year, 6-12 months prior to completion of the thesis, students meet with the monitoring committee, which is now referred to as the thesis committee and includes 5 faculty (one from outside the department). During this meeting, students must obtain approval of the proposed dissertation content in order to proceed with its preparation. The monitoring process provides valuable support and advice for students who may be encountering problems with their work, and enables students to formulate and prioritize their research aims."

-Faculty Members Drs. Jim Goodrich, Art Pardi, and Deborah Wuttke



Reflections from students

Kristi Kincaid, 4th year Biochemistry

"I think that these meetings are helpful for two main reasons: 1. I think it's always good to evaluate your own work on a yearly basis. 2. For the most part I think if you are coming along fine these meetings don't make a huge difference, but if you need help, they help. So it's either neutral or positive, but not negative. And they don't take too much time if you don't really need them. Also, if there's a conflict between a student and an advisor it's helpful for both the advisor and the student to have a couple of people to back either one of them up."



Chris Downey, 4th year Biochemistry

"The requirement to meet with an advising committee once a year during PhD study has been valuable. It is a good way to get feedback and suggestions from outside the research group. It also provides an outside evaluation of progress towards the thesis, so that the thesis advisor is not the only person to decide when a student is ready to graduate.

An important benefit is the associated requirement that students present their research in a public forum prior to meeting their advisory committee. As public speaking is an important skill for scientists to develop, giving these talks is a necessary part of the PhD education and should be required of all students in the department.

Another benefit is regular contact what becomes the thesis committee, which assures that committee members are familiar with students’ research long before they submit their theses. This allows any problems members might have with the research to be addressed early rather than when the thesis is already written and the student is trying to graduate."


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