Thanks on the congrats - it was really great! Overall, the iConference was really good for me but hearing some others’ experiences, it sounds like the program was a bit uneven. At the moment, it seems a little on the academic/who-are-we side of things, but a number of the posters and topics presented could be of interest to industry folks. I would give it another couple of years to develop, but since so much of the iSchools’ work in general has a very practical focus, I think there’s good potential.

The annual evaluation is a Syracuse thing, as far as I can tell. I haven’t heard of other programs doing this, or at least not to this degree. It’s a very nice practice, intended to keep students on track as they progress to candidacy. It’s chaired by your advisor, you invite everyone you’ve had any involvement with in the last year (or more), and submit a lengthy document showing what you’ve been up to. My review document was 13 pages, plus the portfolio contents; in addition to a position statement, it included goals/plans/timeline for graduation, a summary of all graduate coursework, course-by-course descriptions of progress, detail about research and teaching involvement, and a short version of my CV.

In the evaluation session, the faculty review your progress and provide feedback and recommendations for future efforts; you also get to put your questions to them. One of my questions was what to do over the summer - which is how I found out that my summer is already taken care of, so to speak! When it’s all said and done, your advisor puts together a letter that goes in your permanent record to document the evaluation and set out your goals for the next year, and this provides the starting point for the next annual evaluation. It’s really a great mechanism and the personal attention from the faculty is both very valuable and quite remarkable. I’m really glad to have such strong mentorship and support from the faculty!

Congrats on the paper and successful presentation!

How was the iConference overall? Do you think it is the sort of thing industry folks (read alums) would be interested in or is it too academic?

Oh and congrats on the positive evaluation. I didn’t realize PhD programs did that.