After compiling input from College Deans, Faculty Senate, graduate programs, and the Graduate School, the Provost's Office released the document “Policy on Ph.D. Programs” in Spring 2016, which provided guidance to the campus community on a variety of best practices for Ph.D. education at UF. The policy recommended that each Ph.D. student at UF have an Individual Development Plan, or IDP.
The Graduate School has established 3 required steps regarding Individual Development Plans, for each Ph.D. student:
Please see our FAQ below for related questions, and updates.
The Graduate School recommends that programs and colleges identify an IDP template that best suits their graduate students. A general template has been provided, but it is by no means required; there are many programs utilizing a variety of formats, and we encourage this. Ideally, the IDP template utilized by a program should complement the administrative processes in place to monitor their students' progress, as well as any mentoring practices that support their students.
Our template was created based on the feedback of a committee comprised of faculty, staff, and graduate students from 10 Colleges, and after considering various template models (myIDP, Stanford University, University of Wisconsin-Madison). Templates were created for Year 1, and a more streamlined version for Years 2-4.
Students must meet with their advisor or mentor at least once annually. This meeting should occur as a part of any existing mentoring practices, to help students to select competencies to develop in the upcoming year or in future years. It also should be used to identify any needs in skill building or finding a team of mentors. It need not be a meeting solely to discuss the IDP, but it must be clearly focused on collaboratively planning the student's long-term development.
The Graduate School will conduct minimal monitoring of IDP practices for each individual student. The IDP milestone will be added to each new Ph.D. students record in SIS during September of their first year (for Fall, Spring, or Summer start terms). The milestone is being added as a positive service indicator, to allow students to easily see the milestone in their homepage in ONE.UF.
However, as a positive service indicator, the Graduate School will not actively monitor the milestone or seek to add a hold for any milestones that are not fully updated. We aim to prioritize the primary responsibilty of mentoring as located within each student's Ph.D. program, particularly between them and their advisors.
Each academic year, in September, IDP milestones will be updated to "Needs Review", to allow for annual monitoring by each Ph.D. program.
Ph.D. programs will be required to report the date of an IDP meeting during our reporting period, September 15-August 23.
The reporting period for the milestone will be open from September 15 to August 23 each academic year; milestones will be created (for new students) or updated (for continuing students) each September. Ph.D. programs must report this date within SIS, under each student's set of milestones.
The milestone reporting period will be open for all students, regardless of their first-term registration. Students starting their first term in Spring or Summer semester may have data entered within their first full reporting period (i.e. anytime between the September 15 and August 23 after their first term).
For example:
For all continuing students, the milestone must be updated by August 23 each year.
The Graduate School has created a new column in GIMS, under Reports, for your student lists. It will list the most recent status update in the IDP milestone for each individual student, to provide a program-level view of which milestones have been completed.