Читать книгу Qualitative Dissertation Methodology - Nathan Durdella - Страница 33

Faculty who are available (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2016; Brause, 2004; Roberts, 2004) to you means that you will finish on time—or even at all. If you intend on completing, defending, and filing your dissertation, then a chair who is available is a must. So, availability refers to (a) whether or not he or she can chair your committee (i.e., is he or she carrying a high advisee load at the moment or is he or she over the maximum limit of advisees, if applicable) and (b) is he or she around to work with you in an advising capacity. In the latter sense, a couple questions that you may guide your exploration of this criterion include the following: What is their current or anticipated workload? Do they have sabbatical plans over the next 2 to 4 years? Is he or she pre-tenure or probationary faculty such that if he or she does not receive tenure, he or she may not be around for the duration of the dissertation research process? In addition to general availability, you want a faculty partner who is accessible or reachable. You can tell almost immediately if a faculty member is accessible by how he or she responds to you via email. When did he or she reply to your last three email messages? Did you have to wait longer than you expected to hear back from him or her? Let us be clear here: Accessibility does not mean that you will hear back on your question or request immediately, that your email messages will be returned within the hour, or that you can exchange text messages instantly. In the end, the more generally accessible a chair is to you, the more likely you are to remain satisfied with the advising relationship and the more efficiently you are to progress along in your study.