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Individual Development Plan (JHU BME PhD Program)
Annual Review and Discussion of Academic Progress and Professional & Career Development
form last updated 2021-06-25
Summary:
 An IDP must be completed and discussed at least once per year.
 The goal of the IDP is to facilitate a conversation between student and mentor about
academic progress, career development, and professional development.
 Answer the questions honestly. This isn’t graded and there aren’t ‘right answers’; you do
not need to pretend things are going well for the IDP to be helpful. Use the IDP to
identify areas where you need help and areas where your advisor can do better.
 It is not essential to answer every question below; the IDP should be customized to each
student. You also don’t have to start with this document, see e.g. this one developed by
JHU. Some labs have also developed their own IDP documents.
Steps:
1. The student fills in the IDP document as best they can, and sends it to their research
mentor.
2. The research mentor edits or adds comments and returns it to the student prior to the
IDP meeting.
3. The student and mentor meet to discuss the IDP document, stepping through and
spending time on any points that are particularly important to the student at this point
in their career.
4. Following the meeting, the student completes the IDP feedback form online , including
uploading a pdf copy of the completed IDP document.
Detailed background
All PhD programs at JHU are reviewed and overseen by the Doctor of Philosophy Board (DPB).
The DPB’s policy requires annual academic/professional development discussions, starting in
the first year a student is in the program. Our program uses IDPs as the formal method for this.
The IDP must be conducted at least once per year; of course, if a student wishes to have more
frequent discussions on these topics, that should be encouraged.
Please remember that the most important part of the IDP is the conversation and discussion
that this document facilitates between the student and their research mentor. It is ok if some
parts of this document are not completed, or not useful at a particular point in time; also don’t
be daunted if the document feels long, as it’s designed to cover questions that might be useful
at different stages of your PhD. The main idea behind a document like this is to pose questions
that prompt thought about different aspects of academic progress and career & professional
development. No-one is expected to have all the answers, but filling this document out gives
you a great place to start.