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Annual Committee Meetings

All students who are in their second year or more are required to have annual committee meetings. Please make sure to form your committee well in time (before the beginning of your second year) and to get your meetings scheduled and done. The meeting is typically 1 hour to 1.5 hours.

In order to ensure satisfactory progress toward the degree, each student must meet with their faculty committee for an annual review of progress at a mutually agreeable time. At least three members of the committee, including the graduate advisor, must be present. The committee will review the student’s progress toward the degree during the past year and develop a timetable, mutually agreeable among student, graduate advisor, and faculty committee, for completion of the remaining requirements. The annual report of the committee will become part of the student’s record. Should the committee conclude that the student is not making satisfactory progress toward the degree, the student may be placed on academic probation.

The presentation about progress to degree should include a review of coursework, other training opportunities (e.g. summer schools), conference presentations, and publications, as well as discussion of research progress, and plans for the future about these topics as well as timeline for qualifying exam or thesis defense (whichever is coming up next).

Individual Development Plan (IDP), required for students who started in fall 2020 or later: Once the student selects a PhD advisor, they will prepare an IDP (http://myidp.sciencecareers.org/) with assistance from the advisor. Goals can be set on the monthly and yearly timescale; daily and weekly are not needed. This document will then be annually updated by the student and assessed by the doctoral/candidacy committee. It should be submitted to the committee in advance of the annual committee meeting. The rubric below contains a required question to comment on the IDP.

The following links to an online Annual Committee Meeting form. This is required to be filled out by the Chair of the committee.  The online form once filled will be automatically emailed to the Graduate Chair, the graduate division, the committee chair, the advisor, and the student. For students, if you do not receive this form feedback, please ask your committee chair. After the meeting, the student and the advisor should discuss the feedback.

Annual Committee Meeting Rubric, on Qualtrics

This Word document template can be used for the committee to write up feedback offline, and then submit in the online form: Annual Committee Meeting Feedback Form