Midway
through your third year as an RPI/STS grad you decide to sit down and
think about possibilities for your dissertation committee.
Inclined to begin by "bounding" the question, a quick doublecheck of
the Program Handbook and the department website confirms that you'll
need at least four department faculty on your dissertation committee,
and that there are about 16 faculty (say) currently capable of serving
on these committees. Having taken a bit of discrete mathematics
in the past (or maybe played a bit of poker), you know that the number
of possible sets of R things (like committee members) selected from a
superset of N things (e.g. the department's faculty) is:
N!/(R!(N-R)!), where N! = N*(N-1)*(N-2)...*2*1
Given 4 committee members selected from 16 faculty, this yields 1,820 possible committees—a veritable smorgasbord!
You decide to temper your initial enthusiasm with a bit more
analysis. You've heard elsewhere that approaching faculty to
serve on your committee without ever having taken a class with them,
working as a TA or RA for them, or really communicating with them much
at all is probably bad form. Reasonable. You decide to at
least see what the implications of that constraint might be.
You haven't done too bad in terms of your spread of courses over
faculty: you've taken 15 courses taught by 10 different instructors,
plus you've done three terms as a TA, during which you got to interact
with two additional faculty. This brings your total pool to 12,
yielding 495 possible committees. Quite a drop, but hardly very
constraining, so you decide to start there and entertain other issues.
First thing that comes to mind is that you're fairly sure not all
12 of the folks you interacted with are going to be around for the next
four years. One of them has mentioned thinking about retiring in
the near term, another is considering a long-term leave of absence for
health reasons, and a third (it's rumored) is considering a post at an
institution on the West Coast. All would likely be replaced eventually,
of course, but you decide not to rely on timely faculty searches and
smooth transitions, sticking instead with the worst case scenario
analysis: this pares it down to a pool of nine, which yields 126
possible committees. Interesting that math can work that way, but
that's still a pretty big set of choices.
Outside of this theoretical approach, though, empirical evidence has
shown that not all faculty are 100% methodologically or personally
compatible. You have come to realize that some combinations, in
fact, are about as pleasant as drinking bleach. Realizing that
two of your most likely and appropriate selections committee-wise
effectively eliminate two OTHER faculty, your pool is suddenly down to
seven and the number of possible committees is 35.
Okay, maybe that makes sense anyway, since you're not sure you would
have been 100% happy with either of those folks yourself.
Hm. Looking over the remaining list, you realize there's one
member who (for whatever combination of purely idiosyncratic reasons)
you're absolutely positive would not be compatible with YOU. BZZZT! Off the list, which is down to six. Number of possible committees: 15.
So, that's a little disturbing. You decide, what the hell, no
time like the present. The next day you arrange to meet later in
the week with one of your possible contenders. When you DO meet,
however, you find to your horror that this individual is currently over
the norm as far as advisee load. As much as they love the sound
of your project, they'd be doing you a disservice to (blah blah
blah). Your mind races back to the math: five faculty, five possible committees! Initially you're nauseous, but then it hits you: if any one
of your remaining five candidates is similarly overburdened, your long
nights of anxiety over how to form a committee will effectively be OVER!
With great relief and no small measure of optimism, you finish out the
rest of the term, savoring the surprise of who your committee will
ultimately be...