What is the difference between a guidance committee and a dissertation committee?
It’s all a matter of timing. The committee is called a guidance committee during the period when the student is forming a program, taking courses, and completing comprehensive examinations. The dissertation committee is the group that helps the student through the dissertation stage. A guidance committee may simply evolve into a dissertation committee, if the student wishes to continue working with the same group of faculty members. Or the student may wish to replace some or all of the members (including the advisor/chair) at the point when he/she begins working on a dissertation proposal. It all depends on which faculty members can be most helpful at particular stages of a student’s academic career in the program.
