Annual Review

Instructions for Student and Advising Committee for the 2021 Graduate Student Annual Review of Ph.D. Progress – Student should contact their advising committee by November 5th to schedule their review meeting to take place by Dec 15th

An annual review is a requirement for all graduate students.  The only exception for not completing an annual review will be if you have filed on gradforms.osu.edu your “Application to Graduate” for the current term. If you do not graduate this term, you will need to complete your Annual Review December 15th.   The deadline to contact your committee members to schedule your review is November 5th. If you have already completed your review over the summer, please fill out the info on the form and have your committee sign it.

STUDENTS:

1. Complete the Physics Education Research (PER) Physics Graduate Survey. ALL students MUST complete this survey but you can opt in or out of participation in the education research (this option will be the first question). Your responses will be anonymized. The purpose is to investigate student understanding of physics and engineering and the cognitive mechanisms that affect student understanding. The intent is to gain insight into student learning and improve the effectiveness of course instruction. Your performance on the tasks will be used only in a statistical manner, with your identity kept confidential.
   
   Your participation will help improve future instruction, and we appreciate your willingness to contribute to course improvement.

See your email for the Post Candidacy Qualtrics survey link or email Kris Dunlap to request it be resent to you.

2. Complete the 
   File

   Annual Review Form 2021 for Post Candidacy students35.97 KB
   sent by email and schedule a meeting with your advisor. (*These instructions will be on a new webpage and a link to the Word template for the Annual Review form will be included. The page is not yet set up.) 

3. Meet with Advisor and edit the Annual Review Form word document as needed. At the end of the meeting, advisor and student both should sign the revised Annual Review Form. Two options are 1. insert an image of your signatures into the word document on the appropriate signature line.  2. as an alternative, you can type a signature on the appropriate line but an email from your advisor should go with the form to verify the meeting. The form should be saved as a PDF or scanned to PDF if you have a hand written copy with signatures.

4. After meeting with your advisor, schedule a meeting with your full advising committee (advisor and all of your advising committee members).  Please contact your committee by November 5^th and set up your meeting for before December 15^th. The meeting can be held as all in person, hybrid for in person and on Zoom, or all on Zoom.  Typically these meetings should run about 15 minutes for 3rd-4th year students and 30-45 minutes for 5th year and above. Please coordinate with faculty who might need to schedule back-to-back annual review meetings.
   
   Graduate Studies highly recommends meeting with your advisor and all 3 of your advising committee at the same time: in person if possible, hybrid for in person and on Zoom, or all on Zoom.    Your review form will be considered “complete” after you have met with your advisor and the other 3 members of your committee AND your PDF form is signed by all advising committee members. Any combination of electronic, typed, email confirmation or physical signatures are acceptable on the PDF of the Review Form. Incomplete forms will be returned to you and your advisor to add the missing info or signatures. Please note that NO paper copies will be accepted. Scanners are available on the 3^rd floor behind the South elevator, in the front office, or the 2^nd floor lab side by the North elevator.
5. Prepare a 3 to 5 page progress summary in Power Point, Word or your preferred document program for your 5 minute overview/summary for the advising committee. It should be a high-level overview and please include your CV or resume as the last page(s). Once you have your summary and your Annual Review Form that is signed by you and your advisor, you should email at least 1 day before your meeting all documents to your advising committee members.  We recommend you copy yourself and your advisor when you email your documents to your advising committee. (See Appendix below for more details for the recommended contents and suggested order.)  If you have your meeting in person, it is not recommended to use a projector at your meeting unless your advising committee prefers that format.
6. After meeting with your committee, make sure that you have all of the “signatures” you need. You do not have to try and transfer signatures to a single document but it would be helpful for our office if your PDF can be merged into several pages. The form should be saved with file name “ReviewForm LAST name_First name AU21” (example:  “ReviewForm Smith_Robert  AU22.pdf”). Email this PDF form as well as the PDFs or PPT of your Summary/Overview that you provided to your committee as well as your CV. (The CV can be part of your Summary/Overview or a separate document.)  This 3-5 page research Summary/Overview should be named Last Name_First name Review Summary AU21 (example: “Smith_Robert Review Summary AU21.pdf”).  You must send these files via EMAIL to the Physics Grad Studies office to Kris Dunlap at dunlap.151@osu.edu no later than December 15th.  (Please note that NO paper copies will be accepted as these files are digitally stored.)
7. Your advisor and advising committee’s signatures on this form serve as approval of your research progress toward your Ph.D. Your advisor and/or committee members may sign your form but include some comments about conditional approval or areas of concern.  Your annual review document will be reviewed by the Graduate Program Coordinator and may be later assigned to a Graduate Studies Committee faculty member and if needed, any issues or concerns will be discussed by the Graduate Studies Committee.  Should any follow-up with you be required, we may contact you to have a meeting with the Vice Chair of Graduate Studies and/or the Co-Chair of the Graduate Studies Committee to discuss.

THESIS ADVISOR:

Please meet with your advisee before the Annual Review meeting with the full advisory committee to discuss the contents of the student filled-out Annual Review Form and the student’s progress Summary/Overview.  Please be sure to both discuss and provide information for question 6 on Financial Support for your student(s), and please include any comments on current/future funding as you feel would be appropriate. 

Your student will revise and update the Physics Annual Review form and both the Advisor and Student will sign this new version. (Electronic or typed signatures are fine as well as an email confirmation that can be attached.) Student will then prepare his/her/their Summary/Overview and CV and forward via email all documents to the committee before the full annual review meeting date.

Advisors are asked to leave the review before it ends to allow the student to talk privately with the rest of the Advising Committee in case there are issues that the student or the committee would like to discuss without the advisor present. Please see the suggested topics as well as the suggested questions below in the section for the Advising Committee Members.

ADVISING COMMITTEE MEMBERS:

Please work with the students to schedule their annual review meeting, including using Zoom or Teams or email to communicate with the student and/or other committee members if you or another committee member cannot be present for the review.  We highly recommend that students meet with their full committee in person (including on Zoom or Teams) if possible.

Suggested topics to cover:

1. Review milestones accomplished over last year.
2. Review funding plan/student support for coming year.
3. Review plans for future presentations, conferences, workshops, summer schools, and publications.
4. Review career goals past Ph.D. and the plan to achieve them.

Before the annual review meeting ends, we ask the Advisor to leave the room to allow the student to talk privately with the rest of the Advising Committee in case there are issues that the student or the committee would like to discuss without the advisor present. Suggested questions to ask students in the private section of the meeting:

1. What are you concerned about?  (eg. working conditions, climate, your future, etc.)
2. Are you clear on expectations for progress and graduation?
3. Are you satisfied with your progress?
4. Do you get adequate feedback?  (Can include feedback from advisor as well as group members and collaborators.)

At the end of an annual review meeting, please note any comments or concerns on the PDF form when you sign it or you can send the student an email confirming your meeting and approval that can be attached in place of a signature. If you need any assistance with how to access the writing tool in a PDF, please contact Kris or Crystal in the Graduate Studies office.  If you feel a private communication is needed, please send email to the Vice Chair of Graduate Studies and/or the Program Coordinators with any issues or concerns you may have.

By signing the form, you are approving the student’s review material and their progress toward finishing a Physics Ph.D.  In the case of minor concerns, you can note your conditional approval next to your signature with a brief note about the item(s) of concern. If there are larger concerns that you wish to discuss with the advisor or the Vice Chair of Graduate Studies, and/or the Co-chair of the Graduate Studies Committee, you can record a conditional approval with or without comments and contact the Graduate Studies Office, Vice Chair of Graduate Studies, and the Co-Chair of the Graduate Studies Committee after the review.

APPENDIX for document order and Overview preparation:

1. Graduate Studies (GS) Annual Review Form saved as PDF with file name “ReviewForm LAST name_First name AU21.pdf.       Example: ReviewForm Smith_Robert GS AU21.pdf
2. A 3 to 5 page PDF document with your progress summary/overview with file name: Last name_First name Review Summary AU21.pdf. Please note presentation length of this overview should be around 5 minutes (without questions).
3. Page/Slide 1-2: Your name, area of research and year you started in program. Summarize or bullet-point your research progress/accomplishments made toward your degree in the past year.  Please include such things as:
   1. Highlights of your research activity/project(s)                     
   2. Any scholarships or awards you received. (ex: poster competition awards or a fellowship)
   3. Conferences or workshops you attended                       
   4. Published or submitted papers (including name and full authors list (if fewer than 10 authors), noting whether or not you are first author, and journal)
   5. Presented or were a named contributor to a poster or talk (please indicate title of the talk, name of the conference, and whether you presented the poster or talk              
   6. Participated in outreach events (GRASP camp, State Fair, Breakfast of Science Champions, school visit, etc.)
   7. You are an officer or serving member of an OSU student organization. (Includes SWiP, PGSC, CGS, etc.)
   8. Other activities related to progress toward your PhD
4. Page/Slide 2-3: Remaining objectives for completing your research and dissertation and give a time table for achieving them.
5. Page/Slide 3-4: High level work plan. Please specify both student and advisor’s input where appropriate.
6. 1 to 2 page CV (or Resume) in the style or format of your choosing.  

Annual Review meetings must be completed no later than December 15, UNLESS prior permission for delayed submission from the Graduate Studies Office (Kris Dunlap) is received before November 15th.