For grad school, certain programs require a thesis or project to graduate with a master’s. One would think you just pick a thesis topic and begin writing. Wrong. Before you can even nail down your thesis topic, you have to ask someone to be the chair of your thesis committee. Asking a professor to chair a committee is on par with asking someone to marry you for about a year.
Step 1: Determining who is qualified to chair your committee. What topics interest you? Find a professor whose interests mirror that or whose skills will complement the topic you want to research.
Step 2: Deciding if you can work with this person for the next year. This is a biggy. You wouldn’t marry someone if they chewed with their mouth open and that was your pet peeve? So you wouldn’t ask someone to chair your thesis committee if you constantly butt heads.
Step 3: Talk to this person. I know, this seems pretty intuitive, but people just expect professors to agree to be their thesis chairs without having a few conversations. Would you hire someone without speaking with them? My assumption is probably no. Therefore, consider the thesis chair the person hiring you. You may have chosen the company because of the mission or accomplishments, but the company still needs to choose you. Professors want to get to know you, so let them.
Step 4: If you made it this far, the hope is the professor does research in the field you’re interested in AND you two have built a great rapport. Now you mentally prepare to ask them to chair your thesis committee.
Step 5: Asking! Set aside a time to meet with your potential thesis chair and ask. The feeling before asking is what I imagine to be the feeling people have before they propose to another person (I may be wrong). Be clear in what you want and what you’re plans are for your thesis.
After you have the chair, you then get to find committee members! A whole other process of asking a few more people to commit to you for about a year. Sounds intimidating, but fortunately for this part of the process you receive input and help from your thesis chair.