Scheduling a committee meeting

Hi there, so I need to send an email to my committee members in order to set up a time for my preliminary exam. I have written the following but since this needs to be formal/professional I was wondering if you could help me to make it better. Please beware that I have never seen some of the committee members before, and last time I was in touch with them was about a year ago and only via emails!

Dear committee members,

Hello! Hope all is well. I am reaching out to kindly ask about your availability for the week of Nov. 12th to 16th, as my advisor prof XYZ has indicated that I am ready for my dissertation proposal and prelim exam and wanted me to set up a date for my exam. So I would be grateful if you could please go ahead and fill in the doodle poll here.

I appreciate your time and consideration in advance and look forward to seeing you all in November.

Thank you and best regards,
ZYX

2 Likes

To be honest, I think it sounds fine the way it is. It seems to have a friendly, collegial tone, which seems appropriate. Maybe one change I would make is:

To this end, I would be grateful if you could please assist me by filling in the doodle poll here with your available dates.

It is a little more formal this way and avoids beginning a sentence with “so”, which some strict grammarians frown upon.

Maybe others have a different viewpoint? Is the tone fine?

2 Likes

Hello there, so my dissertation committee members filled in the Doodle poll and now I have written the following email to finalize the time and the location of my exam with them. I would appreciate it if you could please help me to make this email better:

Hello professors,

Thank you very much for taking your time and filling in the Doodle poll. Based on the results of the poll, we have decided to go with Monday, Nov 12th, from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm. The location will be the Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering conference room. Thank you again everybody for accepting to be in my committee and I look forward to seeing you then.

Warmest regards,
ZYX

2 Likes

I think I would replace ‘Hello’ with ‘Dear’.

3 Likes

I would rephrase the sentence at the end as follows -

Thank you again everybody for agreeing to be on my committee …

4 Likes