As a new faculty, should I attend students' thesis defense in my department but not in my field?

Question

I am a new assistant professor. My department is very weird — a combination of very different fields. An associate professor sent out invitations for her students' dissertation defense to all the faculties in my department. Should I attend them?

She is not in my research field and none of the topics are related with my research, so I ignored them. However, one of my friends (who is at a different university) says that I should attend them to show my interest. So I am unsure.

Any thoughts and advice will be truly appreciated.

Answer 1

It's normal to advertise PhD defenses broadly in some systems; in many cases defenses are open to the public (at least in part; detailed questioning by the committee is often separate), but as in just about everything in Academia this varies by university/field/country.

It's not expected that everyone that receives such a notice/invitation should attend, but there may be some benefits for you in doing so: you see how defenses are carried out in the department, you learn what your colleagues are up to, you participate in the community of your department.

There are also advantages for the student. I'm in an interdisciplinary field myself, and while I don't understand all the details of research for people in areas further from mine, it is expected that a thesis defense cater to both a broad and narrow audience. Someone who can fit in the same department should be able to get something out of it, even if it isn't narrowly in their research field. PhD students in my program were even required to have one outside person from the department on their thesis committee (not outside the university, as is common in some other areas, but outside their field of interest) to help encourage that breadth of target audience.

I doubt everyone in your department attends every thesis defense in the department, but one good way to find out is to just show up for one. Hopefully you'll learn something new, and maybe you'll have an opportunity to ask a useful "outsider" question. I think it's extremely unlikely you will suffer any direct harm from not attending (that is, I doubt anyone will see it as rude or keep a written tally of who doesn't attend defenses), but you might miss out on opportunity.

Answer 2

Generally there are different customs at different places, and it is never wrong to follow those in such situations. Where I used to work, the principles were roughly these:

A. E-mails are sent to all staff members, so this is not an invitation but rather information that the defense will take place.

B. You should come to the defense (if you can, of course, that is, you have time and such) if (one yes is enough):

1. you are interested in the work of this particular PhD student;
2. you are specifically asked (in person) by at least one other staff member to come to the defense (can be in the form of "are you going to this defense?");
3. the PhD student asks you to come (this never happens, but...);
4. you (actively) collaborate with the supervisor (promoter) of the PhD student.

I am not saying that this is a perfect system, but it worked quite well and was never made public explicitly (as a PhD Defense Attendance Code or something similar), so I suppose it has more in it than just a set of arbitrary rules.

Answer 3

1. If there are only few defenses per years, you should consider attending. Every one is a big deal.
2. Whether the field is different or not does not really have an effect in the beginning. If it is close to your interests, you can learn something and maybe it will scientifically useful. If it is far from your interests, you can get an idea of what those people do, which seems valuable, as you are in the same department. Maybe it is even interesting. Note that the value of getting familiar with the exotic goes down after you have attended to a few seminars or PhD defenses and the field is no longer quite as exotic for you. Then it becomes more a matter of interest.
3. For the social expectations, consult your mentor or colleagues. These vary enormously from country to country, and vary even from university to university in smaller countries, not to speak of the larger ones. In a comment John Coleman added that it also varies from department to department.

Answer 4

I'm with Bryan. At UT Austin, my department (Aerospace Engineering) had public defenses, and for popular students, lots of people came to support the student. I went to several in my last couple of years just to see how they were run. The non-committee members and the examinee were thrown out of the room after the student's presentation so that the committee could grill them. Then the student was thrown out into the hall to await their decision or they were immediately congratulated and the signature page was signed. Hard-core friends waited in the hall for the results and to be further support.

If you go in advance of the time of the talk, you might get a chance to ask a fellow faculty member if they are public events (except for the grilling), and then you'll get the opportunity to watch how your new school conducts these events. I would want to see a couple of them before I had to be on a committee or lead one. At the same time, you'll get to meet a few of your new colleagues from across the department that work on different things.