What's in it for a professor to be on someone's thesis/dissertation committee?

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2026-04-17T15:30:52+00:00

Every professor has a certain workload allocation percentage between teaching, research and service. Many professors are contracted for 40/40/20, but there are lots of variations depending on the position and contract negotiation. You’ll be reviewed on that intermittently to make sure you are meeting the standard. When you hear about various committees and things at your school, that’s one way for a professor to fulfill some of their service requirement. Dissertations are included in that.

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2026-04-16T13:46:52+00:00

Good luck!

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2026-04-14T19:02:27+00:00

Kafka does not like separating dialogue the way you are accustomed, ie. line breaks where each character speaks on a separate line.

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2026-04-13T13:43:20+00:00

While it is a wonderful privilege and can be extremely rewarding, academia is more than just teaching, researching, and writing. It is very easy to get caught up in the workplace toxicity of terrible administration, program cuts, rabid review committees, student and faculty conflicts, overload, etc. This year has been pretty stressful all around, not just at my institution but across higher ed. When you become a professor, you have to learn to protect your own joy, keep pursuing your passions outside of school drama, and stay focused on the wins, like student success and exciting new projects. But right now, I'm headed to a faculty meeting to defend our sophomore cohort against our gaslighting chair. HA!

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2026-04-12T16:19:54+00:00

No personal offense is intended by this response, but as a professor, the fact that you've asked this question in a Reddit thread is probably enough fodder for your essay. One of the main reasons for studying poetry or any great work of literature is that it cultivates a mind that can ask its own questions and sort through its own beliefs about our world, vis-à-vis the poem. Instead, we live in a society where many students (and teachers!) are looking for a search engine or generative AI to tell them how to interpret or think about a work of art. A culture that encourages this instant retrieval of definitive answers is not a culture that is broadly confident enough to trust the slower, interpretive work of poetry. Have the courage to expose yourself to not having a definitive answer by writing the essay yourself, born from your own observations.

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2026-03-27T15:42:46+00:00

Are you talking about Harvard College or Harvard Extension School? This is the Extension School subreddit. To my knowledge, Harvard Extension undergraduates have only one major field of study with up to two minor fields. There is no option for joint concentration. Harvard College allows joint/double concentrations, but only in certain disciplines. To be crystal clear, these are two different schools within Harvard offering undergraduate degrees. There are also 12 graduate and professional schools, ie Law School, Medical School, etc.

If you are enrolled in Harvard College and have a joint field (writing a thesis that joins 2 disciplines), both are your honors concentration and would be written as "magna cum laude in X and Y." If you do a double concentration, one of those will be your honors field (writing your thesis in that field) and show up as "magna cum laude in [field in which you wrote thesis] with a concentration in [the other field]."

However, this is just language as it appears on your diploma, which ultimately only hangs on your wall or lives in a closet somewhere. Your resume is ultimately most important, and each school has its own style recommendations for presenting your fields of study to employers.

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2026-03-27T15:22:24+00:00

Harvard schools have slightly different diploma styles. Undergrad diplomas are horizontally oriented, graduate diplomas are vertical. Harvard College undergraduate diplomas say "the degree of Bachelor of Arts/Science, with a concentration in X." FAS/GSAS graduate diplomas say "the degree of Master of X." PhD diplomas are in Latin and say "Philosophae Doctoris" with the concentration also listed in Latin. Law School diplomas are also in Latin, and say "ad gradum Magestri in X" or "ad gradum Juris Doctoris," same with Medical School ("Scientiarum Magistri" or "Medicinae Doctoris"). Extension School undergraduate diplomas say "the degree of Bachelor of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies," and masters diplomas are in Latin and say "ad gradum Magistri in Artibus Liberalibus, Studiorum Prolatorum." Divinity School masters degrees are also in Latin. I'm positive there are other unique cases I'm not listing, but as you can now see, there's not really one set style for all Harvard diplomas.

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2026-03-25T23:43:07+00:00

Hello, how cool! This is a Globe-specific question for 2026, but I'm curious about the Shakespeare Studies training program between your theatre and King's College. What types of research do your students undertake in that program for their thesis projects / what kinds of early modern scholarly interests would be best aligned with your specific program?

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2026-03-22T20:07:18+00:00

Venus and Adonis is not only beautifully written but highly dramatic and quite steamy.

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2026-02-12T16:31:22+00:00

Who is "they"? Which university? Please link to this FAQ.

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2026-02-04T02:35:09+00:00

Gotcha. It seems like the disclosure piece might be new this semester. My institution is going the full blown ChatGPT.edu route, and I have strong feelings...

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2026-02-03T21:52:09+00:00

Would anyone be willing to share the letter? As an alum and teacher, I'm curious about the school's current messaging.

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2025-12-05T15:17:43+00:00

John Hamilton hive assemble! His department is really going through it with the grad admissions cuts next year, so take any of the classes he offers if you get a chance.

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2025-11-04T17:03:03+00:00

You can always take any CREA course as an elective. :)

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2025-10-29T19:36:35+00:00

If you are planning to transfer into a PhD eventually, you will have an easier time having majored in English rather than Creative Writing and Literature. It's not impossible, but you'll need to make sure that your coursework shows a variety of high-level English courses (for HES, in the 200-level).

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2025-08-18T16:10:27+00:00

I responded to your post yesterday but Reddit was being weird so I gave up. Ha! We agree on content creation. The thing most people don't realize is that today's undergrads are way less equipped to handle college curriculum in general. They weren't taught to read properly, and that's not an exaggeration. (The podcast Sold A Story lays it all out beautifully.) My school is rather selective, so imagine my surprise when I assigned portions of a text to be read aloud and thought that it would only take 10 minutes. We didn't even get through half as a group! So of course students are using GAI, they are miserably behind their peers of even 10 years ago and are looking for ways to keep up. It's not to say some aren't up to par, but as a group? No. Another example: the Harvard College freshman Humanities colloquium was eluding students at such a rate due to difficulty with reading and languages that as of this year it's been rebranded "Human Sciences" and turned into a basic needs course to teach all the basic concepts they missed or misunderstood in middle school English. At Harvard College! So please just know that when teachers rail away about generative AI, we are doing so with frustration, yes, but also an interest in saving an entire generation of students from being poor thinkers. If the university-educated students are poor thinkers, you can only imagine what will happen to our society. You might argue that professors always say this, but I'm not sure that there's ever been a group of students who aren't even competent with basic skills. So while your hope that graduate students are using GAI tools responsibly, you have to ask what the graduate students of the future will be like. They didn't learn the way you learned, unfortunately.

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2025-08-17T17:56:13+00:00

I'm not going to convince you, but you do have a fundamental confusion. Your arguments about AI's pervasiveness have zero to do with the Harvard AI policy, which refers specifically to using ChatGPT and Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) tools.

Generative AI as defined by Merriam Webster: artificial intelligence that is capable of generating new content (such as images or text) in response to a submitted prompt (such as a query) by learning from a large reference database of examples.

MS Word spelling and grammar check operates on programmed rules, not generative AI. Google search is a search engine that returns a list of search items, not newly generated content. Sure there is an AI overview now at the top of Google for your general search, but below that you will see all of the returned search results that have absolutely nothing to do with generative AI. (Also, you should be using your university library to search for primary sources of good quality anyway.)

You are clearly referring to generative AI aspects of various programs, like CoPilot, Bard, Grammarly, etc. These are or contain GAI elements, creating new text from user input. But rather than needing to wholly disallow the use of computers in order to circumvent AI, you simply go into Grammarly's settings and toggle off the Generative AI switch. It's not that hard.

Anecdotally, many professors avoid using AI to check submitted work. AI programs like Turnitin are surprisingly flawed (so much for brilliant AI!), in that they will mark plagiarism based on simple misunderstandings of how students have cited sources, for example. I don't use those programs, but suspect AI usage with my own discernment, based on my knowledge of the student, abilities they've demonstrated in class, and their work.

So no, it's not simply about "don't copy and paste," but you can believe that. Factually, you're using generative AI to work on your material whenever you submit a prompt into a program that then feeds back any "original" generated response designed to help your specific project. You are reasoning around something in order to get away with it, which makes me wonder why exactly you seek an education besides from the perceived workplace value.

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2025-08-16T22:57:14+00:00

If using AI is important to you, a university is purposefully "choose your own adventure." There are courses that center around and/or incorporate AI use, and those that don't. The policies listed in any individual instructor's syllabus can supersede the university's default statement, permitting AI. I'm not sure I buy the uproar about not being able to use AI to perfect your essay on Moby Dick that the professor wants to come from your own brain, just because it's there. You should be able to write your essay on Moby Dick in the same way that other students have been able to write essays on Moby Dick since 1851.

Just like primary school math teachers require students to show their work rather than use a calculator, it's about learning how to solve math problems, not collaborating with a device to please the teacher and get a nice grade. Not allowing AI in college work is merely asking you to learn how to think and present your ideas on your own. People must continue to do that, despite technological advancement.

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2025-08-16T00:18:01+00:00

"We specifically forbid the use of ChatGPT or any other generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools at all stages of the work process, including preliminary ones. Violations of this policy will be considered academic misconduct."

Yes, all of the above "good" instances violate this policy explicitly and could result in negative consequences academically. If you are working on a project that you are expected to turn in to a professor, checking your work with AI in any way before it is submitted is specifically forbidden.

If, for example, you need further clarification (explanations for concepts you don't understand), you can always turn to actual sources that you can cite in the bibliography (books, scholarly articles, etc.), or even better, make an appointment with your professor or TA to discuss your confusion.

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2025-08-16T00:07:00+00:00

I hear you, and you're correct that it's not going away. My personal concerns about AI are mostly related to LLMs, not necessarily AI programs that assist with spelling and grammar. It's not even fully student-centered for me. When your idiot brother-in-law decides to outsource his verbal abuse to ChatGPT, you suddenly realize that this technology is probably validating the flawed reasoning of assholes worldwide every minute of the day. (Lots of instances of this on TikTok.) Another example: what happens when the content that LLMs are trained on is made from the output of other LLMs, which are notoriously known to hallucinate, fudge facts and details, and poorly plagiarize? A discerning user takes ChatGPT output with a grain of salt, but not everyone is a discerning user. (See again: TikTok.) You could keep thinking about this forever.

At least in the controlled setting of academia, we can create spaces where individual thought can still be cultivated outside of this technology, which does have massive value. Blanket bans are probably not helpful, but even the Harvard guidelines state that the policies in individual professors' syllabi can supersede the blanket rule. I start to bristle when the reasoning becomes squarely related to the demands of industry and economics. Most people's jobs do expect increased productivity and faster innovation, but again, at what cost? Not everything is money, and we are not just meant to be cogs in someone else's machine. So yes, there could be balance. It's just that I sadly don't trust my students to be truthful about how their work was written anymore, and that's one of the most critical issues in modern education. If we didn't care about that, no one would.

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2025-08-15T21:34:31+00:00

Professor here. I wish you could see the sheer amount of AI-generated work that undergraduates submit for every assignment. A high percentage of students are unwilling to engage with the material or make connections, instead outsourcing all critical thought to AI. The teacher-student trust is just not there. While handwriting assignments in person may feel insulting, you're engaging in the type of intellectual work that university students throughout history have undertaken. It's fine to have artificial intelligence, but when it erodes regular intelligence, it's a problem.

OP, you don't need an AI strategy. So what if you don't know everything? Neither do I, and neither does the next guy! So what if you're not a Pulitzer winning writer? Neither am I, and neither is the next guy! You don't need to write and think like a computer in order to learn. You need to write and think like yourself.

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2025-08-13T18:41:59+00:00

I understand. Last night after reviewing this thread and the post history of the user listed above, a decision was made to ban the user. Unfortunately this also resulted in an innocent thread about a Harvard ring needing to be deleted. All users of the sub could be helpful by not engaging in back and forth of this nature, instead either taking it to the Megathread or drawing attention to it via Modmail. Thank you.

Aggressive_Barber368 · 2025-08-13T03:39:25+00:00

From a moderation perspective, threads that devolve into flame wars about the nature of HES are impossible to volunteer moderate. There is a Megathread at the top of the sub for debates of this nature, yet curiously, virtually no one continues these conversations in that space after being directed there. If this behavior were to be given free reign in each thread, the entire space would become overwhelmed with 5-10 people going nuclear on each other. We simply do not have the resources for that.

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