The purpose of the Annual Review is to offer students structured feedback between their candidacy exam and their dissertation defense. This will allow the committee to become more familiar with the student’s work over time and will allow the student to receive constructive feedback while their research is in progress.
Students will meet with their committee in the fall no sooner than 1 year after passing candidacy,
usually in the Fall semester. The graduate office will communicate a calendar of staggered deadlines to serve as the timeline for completing the submission of all paperwork for the Annual Review process.
Fall Semester | Spring Semester | |
Year 1 | Coursework GPA requirement | |
Year 2 | Candidacy | |
Year 3 | ||
Year 4 | Annual Review | |
Year 5 | Annual Review | Oral Defense |
The student will complete the Annual Review Update Form. The Graduate Office encourages students to share a draft of these materials with their advisor prior to completing the form in DocuSign. The advisor will approve the form, and then it will automatically route to the rest of the committee. The committee will review the document, and each committee member will have the option to sign the form (without an individual meeting with the student), to request an individual meeting with the student or to request a meeting of the committee. While it is not required if not requested by the committee members, we encourage students to schedule meetings with their committee members as needed/interested. The fully signed document will then route to the Graduate Program Administrator, who will file the annual review in the student’s file.
The following General Instructions Handout can be sent to committee members, especially outside committee members. Students are encouraged to communicate the Annual Review process to their committee before submitting their executive summary.
The Annual Review Update Form can be accessed here
A few helpful tips for filling out the form in DocuSign:
If the committee finds that a student’s work has serious deficiencies, the student should design an Action Plan with the help of their advisor. The Action Plan should have concrete and measurable tasks within a manageable timeline and clear deadlines. It should also address all deficiencies recognized by the committee. The graduate office has provided numerous resources for creating Action Plans.
The Action Plan should be concisely presented to the committee in 10-15 minutes. It should contain a clear timeline and metrics for measuring improvement. There are no formatting requirements. While it might be most beneficial to the student to meet with the committee in a group (virtual attendance is acceptable), this may not be possible given the diversity of committee members. For serious deficiencies, group meetings are suggested, but not required.
If a student’s work is ranked satisfactory or, more rarely, excellent, the performance goals notated on the Annual Review Form and within the Executive Summary will be sufficient to initiate discussion with the committee. Committee members can meet individually or within a group with the student. A group meeting may be called by the student, the advisor, or any member of the committee. Group meetings should be short, ideally lasting less than 45 minutes. Individual meetings can be shorter, between 10-15 minutes.
When reserving a room for a group meeting, schedule time before and after the meeting for set up and clean up. Room reservations can be done in CPE through the departmental website.
The student is expected to take clear notes of the committee’s feedback during the meetings. A single summary email will be sent by the student to the entire committee, including the advisor(s), after the conclusion of the meetings. At this point the committee can offer clarification as needed. This summary process should occur for all students regardless of the way their work has been ranked.
By signing the Annual Review Signature Page, each committee member agrees that they have read the Annual Review Update Form and the Executive Summary and that they have met with the student either in a group or individually. If the student's work needed improvement, a signature indicates that the student's proposed action plan is sufficient to remedy any deficiencies discussed in the student's review.
Forms can also be found at the Forms Page of the handbook.
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This a tool that helps graduate students interested in non-academic careers explore the extensive range of available options.
It offers assistance to students in the humanities, social sciences and STEM disciplines, and contains free content available to anyone and premium content available by institutional subscription. The University of Texas at Austin’s institutional subscription makes available premium content to all current students, faculty and staff with valid UT EIDs.
Features on the site include authentic application materials used by Ph.D.s to secure their first post-academic jobs. These materials include résumés, cover letters, additional correspondence, position announcements, curriculum vitae and narratives written by Versatile Ph.D. members explaining exactly how the jobs were won. These members are often available to answer questions and offer advice.
Visitors of the site will also find first-person career autobiographies in which advanced Versatile Ph.D.s describe how their careers evolved after leaving the academy, as well as panel discussions including small groups of Ph.D.s working in the same non-academic field who describe what their work is like and answer questions from users.
SMART Goals from MindTools
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Singh, Manjet Kaur Mehar, "Graduate Students' Needs and Preferences for Written Feedback on Academic Writing," English Language Teaching 9/12 (2016).