Individual Development Plans (IDPs) are designed to support graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in identifying your goals and specific steps that can support you in reaching them.
Developing a plan in collaboration with your mentors and adviser(s) and communicating regularly about goals can help you ensure that you are centering your learning as you progress through your doctoral degree or postdoctoral experience.
We recommend completing an individual development plan for a quarter, two quarters, an academic year, or a year at a time, and revisiting it at least quarterly.
You do not need to develop the plan on your own! Many students find it helpful to identify goals and some steps they might take and then discuss it in their advising meetings or mentoring conversations. This can support identification of additional goals or steps you (or your advisers and mentors!) might take toward them.
Some students also find it helpful to include goals in other areas of their life in their IDP, to support communication about and coordination between different facets of their life.
HCDE has developed an initial template for IDPs (Google Docs link).
Also see: