Working together, the student and advisor will decide on an Advisory Committee. An Advisory Committee consists of a minimum of four faculty, including the advisor. All MTU members must also be members of the MTU Graduate Faculty. There must be faculty from at least two university departments. It is suggested that one advisory committee member be a non-MTU faculty member, chosen with the explicit intent of providing research expertise. This person, who does not need to be involved with advisory activities until the research discussions/activities begin, will have adjunct faculty status - limited to serving on the Advisory Committee of the given Ph.D. student. Requests for an adjunct faculty appointment should be made to the Graduate Dean in the form of a memo accompanied by a résumé of the proposed committee member. As is the case with choosing a major professor, so it is with choosing members of an Advisory Committee; the members must also agree to be on the Advisory Committee.
The Advisory Committee becomes official by having each member sign the Recommended Advisory Committee(*) form. As this form must also be signed by the Director and the Dean of the Graduate School, these two persons, in effect, approve the Advisory Committee. As noted in Keeping on Track, the Recommended Advisory Committee(*) form should be turned in during a student's first semester of residence.
The Advisory Committee
It should be noted that although the above list is given as a list of activities which an Advisory Committee approves some of the activities must also be approved by the Dean of the Graduate School and/or the CS&E Director.
Most of the activities in the above list are relatively common in any Ph.D. program. However, given the interdisciplinary nature of CS&E research, it may be that a CS&E Advisory Committee will need to be more active in ``promoting and approving the research'' than might be the case in a Ph.D program in a single discipline. Further, because it may be common for the proposed research to include subareas in which the advisor is not an expert, it will be especially important to choose Advisory Committee members with expertise in these subareas who are willing to be actively involved in the research.
Any non-MTU Advisory Committee member will be involved only in those above-listed activities related to the research. Further, though the non-MTU member would certainly be welcome to attend the presentation of the dissertation proposal and the final oral examination, attendance is not mandatory. Her/his vote will, of course, be required for the approval of the dissertation proposal and for the final dissertation.