Midterm Evaluations

 

Mid-term evaluations

To encourage more Ph.D. candidates to complete with good quality and within the prescribed time, as well as to prevent backsliding, the Doctoral course in Geosciences introduced the mid-term evaluations. The mid-term evaluation consists of an annual oral presentation and written progress report. If the Ph.D. candidate gets positive evaluations on his/her presentation and report will pass the year and proceed to the next year or the final evaluation procedure (for the Ph.D. candidates enrolled in the third year of the program). 

 

Purpose

Mid-term evaluation is an evaluation of the individual doctoral candidates' progress and will be carried out preferably in the first week of September every year. At mid-term evaluation, the doctoral candidates are given the opportunity to receive feedback on their work so far and opportunity to clearly define their further work. At the same time, mid-way evaluation allows the Doctoral Course for structured follow-up of the candidates and to identify possible situations that require follow-up.

 

The candidate’s report

The candidate should prepare a written a report (maximum five pages) on his/her activity during the year, this includes research results, publications, participation to congresses/workshops, attendance to courses/summer schools, teaching activity (a template is available here). 

 

The candidate's presentation

The candidate should prepare an oral talk during which he/she presents the work done so far. The presentation is public. Each Ph.D. candidate will give a short presentation. Each presentation is around 8 minutes, followed by a 2 min Q&A. For Ph.D. candidates enrolled in third year of the program, the presentation will be longer (25 min + 5 min Q&A). 

 

The candidate’s initial presentation

Before the end of the first quarter of the project, each candidate enrolled in the first year should give a 10 minute talk plus 2 min Q&A presenting his/her research project to the Ph.D. board.