PhD | Monitoring Progress
Overview
The Computer Science Department has two programs to help track your progress toward the PhD program.
The first program consists of annual meetings between each PhD student and the staff Graduate advisor, Jay Subramanian, to discuss the student's progress and happiness, learn what is going well and not so well for the student, and discuss ways of dealing with any problems. These meetings have two purposes:
- To help students resolve issues that might otherwise remain latent
- To provide the faculty an overall sense of how our PhD students are feeling.
The discussions in these meetings will be confidential to the most significant degree allowed by law (specific issues, such as Title IX violations, must be reported). Summary results and issues will be shared with the faculty.
The second program consists of annual reviews with the goal of ensuring that each PhD student receives meaningful and constructive feedback from their advisor every year. During the Spring quarter, each student will fill out a questionnaire summarizing their progress over the year and issues they would like to discuss. The student's advisor(s) will read the form and fill out questions that illustrate their sense of progress and constructive suggestions for improvement. After the student has reviewed the advisor's comments, the student and advisor will meet to discuss the form. The review forms will be collected and retained by the CS PhD student services office, under the control of the Director of Graduate Studies, the forms will not be publicly available.
Annual reviews only apply to PhD students in their second year or later; yearly meetings will be held for all PhD students.