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 the deadline for submitting the 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. Students are encouraged to communicate the Annual Review process to their committee.
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.
Lynda.com is an online learning platform that helps anyone learn business, software, technology and creative skills to achieve personal and professional goals. You can login with your EID to learn a variety of skills, such as team management, that will help you through your career path. This link will take you to the UT portal.
Individual Development Plan Resources, Graduate School, UW-Madison
My IDP, Science Careers, American Association for the Advancement of Science
Mentoring Resources, Graduate Mentoring Guidebook, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Individual Development Plan, Department of Science, Purdue College of Science
Adviser, Teacher, Role Model, Friend: On Being a Mentor to Students in Science and Engineering, National Academy Press (1997)
S.G. Brainard and L. Ailes-Sengers, "Mentoring Female Engineering Students: A Model Program at the University of Washington," Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering 1 (1994): 123-135
Barbara E. Lovitts, Making the Implicit Explicit: Creating Performance Expectations for the Dissertation (Sterling, VA: Stylus), 2007.
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
"Time Management for Scholars," presentation offered regularly by the UT Austin University Writing Center
Setting Meaningful, Challenging Goals from MindTools
Locke, Edwin A. and Gary P. Latham, "New Directions in Goal-Setting Theory," Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15/5 (2006).
Dweck, Carol S. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Ballantine Books, 2008.
Duckworth, Angela. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. New York: Scribner, 2016.
Zenger, Jack and Joseph Folkman, "Your Employees Want the Negative Feedback You Hate to Give," Harvard Business Review, January 15, 2014
Style Under Stress Assessment, Crucial Conversations by VitalSmarts
Receiving and Giving Effective Feedback, Centre for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo
Hardavella, Georgia, Ane Aamli-Gaagnat, Neil Saad, Ilona Rousalova, and Katherina B. Sreter, "How to give and receive feedback effectively," Breath: The Resperatory Professional's Source for Continuing Medical Education 13/4 (2017): 327-333.
Singh, Manjet Kaur Mehar, "Graduate Students' Needs and Preferences for Written Feedback on Academic Writing," English Language Teaching 9/12 (2016).