Post by Karma Rose Zavita, CLS GIC Peer Mentor 2021
This blog post will help you to understand what an Individual Development Plan is, how to go about finding a method to completing one that works for you, and general tips for working through one.
What is an ‘Individual Development Plan’ (IDP)?
The goal of an Individual Development Plan is to help students to prepare their time at UCI to best serve their long-term career and professional goals and accomplishments.
Be it publishing, obtaining certificates, gaining teaching experience, running a lab, passing comp exams, etc., we can all benefit from planning ahead. Planning as much of our program as we can ahead ensures that we maximize our time, funding, and energy.
An Individual Development Plan is a document students fill out alone and/or with their advisor(s) as most departments require that an IDP be completed and on file.
The UCI IDP covers the following main topic areas:
- Academic Course Planning
- Research Planning
- Career Planning
- Conference/Publications Planning
- Funding Planning
- Health and Wellness Planning
- Leadership Development Planning
- Dissertation Progress Planning
Many people will also opt to add in sections that are essential to their field of study, or to their personal lives. This may vary from adding time as a Fullbright Scholar abroad, to trying to plan the time to get married or start a family. Whatever you know you want to accomplish in the time of your program, it should be notated in an organized manner to help you meet your goals.
How do I make or complete an IDP?
There are many different ways to make an IDP, and there is a template that the UCI Graduate Division has put together that I encourage everyone to use as a starting point (see above image). Whether you decide just to use this document, or expand and make your own, is up to you.
From this document, I recommend you take the main headers (seen also in the bullets in the above section) and expand them or organize them however is best for you. Perhaps you like using a project planning app, excel sheets, or a massive whiteboard. You know best what works for you, but for me, a combination of excel and word documents have been most useful.
Once you have chosen your method of organization, begin to fill out all that you know now. If you do not know much, search your department’s website for information, refer to the graduate handbook for your program for the requirements, the timing of exams, papers, etc. Be sure that you know all of the expectations your department has of you as a graduate student. Then begin to incorporate elements that you know your field may expect of your time at UCI more broadly-such as conference attendances, grants/funding, serving on committees, etc.
Once you’ve reached a point of saturation, reach out and set a time to connect with peers in your program or staff in your department to get input and advice on things you may have forgotten to consider. Perhaps there are scholarships or funding opportunities your department specifically has that you can add to your IDP. Perhaps there is a call for summer teaching positions, a children’s science camp you can get involved in, or an opportunity to study abroad.
Things to consider adding to your IDP:
- Scholarship/funding application deadlines
- Annual conference dates, memberships etc.
- Certificate programs offered on campus (there’s a lot)
- Leadership or service positions you may want to apply for-either within your department or the schools
- Journal publication deadlines, timelines for R&R etc.
Example of an IDP section:
Here I hope to show you how I was able to start filling out the ‘Academic Course Planning’ section of my IDP.
For context: I am currently enrolled in the Criminology, Law and Society program, which has an average completion time of 5 years, though many take 6 or more. I am mostly interested in a career in teaching, so my research goals section is much smaller than say my ‘Career Planning’ section which has teaching certificates and mentoring certificates I hope to complete.
In order to fill out the ‘Academic Course Planning’ section of the IDP, I need to know what courses I am expected to take, and when those courses are usually offered. Here is the process I recommend:
Academic Course Planning
Step 1: Find out the required courses for your program
Every department should have a document (see image on right) or website space that notifies each student of the required courses and milestones they must complete before being accepted to candidacy and later to completing your degree.
Step 2: Try to see what terms those courses are typically offered & tentatively map out those courses on your timeline for the whole 3, 4, 5+ year program
- Look through the old course catalogues to see when the courses are usually offered
- Ask the graduate coordinator for your department
- Talk to peers who are a year or so ahead of you
Step 3: Update your timeline: a) when the actual course schedule for a term is released online, b) when you register, and c) when you complete the courses
For me, I have found excel to be very useful for planning out the potential course schedule for any given term and for my bigger 5-year plan. I anxiously wait to log in when the course schedule is released online, and I scour all the departments whose classes I am interested in.
I transfer the information for all the classes I want to take into my excel sheet, even if they overlap on days and times-it does not matter at that point.
Then, when my registration time comes around, I have all of the classes I need or want to take in one place. If courses are full, I have a few backup options ready.
Even if I can’t get into all of the courses I want, it is nice to be able to see courses I wanted to take but was not able to. It’s likely that these courses will be offered again in future years, and the info is easily accessible and in one place.
The most rewarding part of having this excel sheet is when I get to go back in and change the status of the course as ‘complete!’ Those small wins are worth it.
General Tips for Completing Your Individual Development Plan
- Work backwards. What do you hope to accomplish by the time you graduate? How many publications do you hope to have? How many conferences would you like to go to? How long do you think your dissertation research will take?
- Dream Big: Put EVERYTHING you can think of wanting to accomplish in your IDP. You can filter things out later, but getting it all on the page and acknowledging that you have big aspirations is important. You’d be surprised how many people can help you find the tools, people, funding, skills necessary to help you accomplish your goals if they know about them.
- Maximize your resources: Utilize your home departments website and resources, and the handbook for your school as a start. But don’t forget to use your colleagues, reddit, books, podcasts, interviewing professionals in the field, LinkedIn etc. Find books about careers in your field that can help you to understand all that may not be explicit or in a handbook. What are people in your industry accomplishing prior to graduating? How are they focusing their time? For me, because I want to teach, the most helpful book thus far was ‘The Professor Is In’ as it taught me so much about what going on the job market is like, and what to anticipate I might need to have completed by which year.
- Break everything into the smallest size pieces you can; you’ll be more likely to accomplish them, and feel good about the smaller steps in the process!
- Get feedback from as many people as you can including faculty and peers or even the career center. It can be helpful to have others let us know what might be feasible, what we are missing, or how to better go about breaking things up into manageable pieces.
- Find Balance. Doing an IDP will likely show you that you have clear interests in a particular career. While publishing 13 journal articles might be necessary for some to get the dream job they want, doing so might not be healthy for other areas of their lives. Do your best to keep a balance of the sections of your IDP and you will likely feel more balanced throughout your program.