The student must recommend to the Graduate School a faculty member who will serve as adviser and dissertation committee chair. In essence, this individual will be the academic mentor throughout the student's program. The adviser must meet these criteria:
- Must be a regular faculty member and ordinarily be a tenured faculty member.
- Must have competence in the proposed domain area, hold a terminal degree in his or her discipline, and be an active scholar, normally with at least three refereed articles, books, creative activities/performances (as appropriate to the discipline) within the past five years. If the scholarly activity listed above is not met the chair must have a minimum of one refereed article, and two other contributions consisting of grants, book chapters, or presentations in an area related to the proposed dissertation.
- Must have served previously on two or more dissertation committees.
- If the chair of a proposed dissertation committee has not previously served as a dissertation committee chair, at least one other committee member must have previously served in that role.
- Must agree to continue advising and directing the student, even during sabbaticals or leaves of absence or have a co-chair who agrees to do so.
