Select my Thesis Advisory Committee

The Thesis Advisory Committee consists of the Major Professor/Research Director, two additional faculty members of the Department of Biological Sciences and one faculty who is not in the Department of Biological Sciences. This external faculty member is typically from another Department at Purdue University but can also be a faculty at another institution. Thus, the Thesis Advisory Committee needs to have at least 4 members, one of them being from outside the Department of Biological Sciences.

If the external committee member is not at Purdue and not yet in the Purdue Graduate Faculty Database, the student needs to inform the Graduate Coordinator, so that the Coordinator can gather the required information from the external faculty to be added to the Purdue Graduate Faculty Database.

The student submits a request for appointment of this committee to the Committee on Graduate and Advances Studies using the corresponding PhD Advisory Selection Form (PDF).

To submit the information about the Advisory Committee to the Graduate School, the student completes the Form 8 "Request for Appointment of Examining Committee" in MyPurdue.

The Major Professor – PhD student relationship must be a mutually acceptable one. The Major Professor will direct the student’s research.