Does anyone in the gradblr community have any advice about asking profs to be on your committee? It feels so awkward!!

just email them! probably the best way to catch them since they’re so busy. here’s what i sent and everyone i asked said yes so something worked. My email title was “CBIO Committee Request”:

Dear Dr. ____,
My name is Julia ____ and I’m a 2nd year CBIO student in Dr. ____’s lab currently studying the effects of estrogen on estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer bone metastasis. Though TGFB signaling has been shown to be important in ER- breast cancer bone metastasis, I hypothesize that estrogen is the main driver of ER+ breast cancer bone metastasis, independent of TGFB signaling.
I’m wondering if you have the time to be part of my committee. I value your expertise in TGFB signaling, and know you can offer me a lot of insight into that pathway, particularly the tools and models I can use to assess TGFB signaling (or lack thereof).
I attached my specific aims page for my thesis project if you’d like to take a look. It’s definitely still a work-in-progress (especially the subaims/specific methods).
Please let me know if you’re interested, and if you would like to meet sometime to discuss my project and goals.
Thanks so much!
Cheers,
Julia

(You don’t need to attach anything but I did so they can read more about my project if they wanted to… but chances are, because these professors are super busy people, they won’t even open the attachment until maybe an hour before your 1st committee meeting. I just did out of formality)

Just keep it short and to the point. As I said, profs are super busy people who get hundreds of emails a day. 

Good luck!