Research Scholarship Review of Progress

The D Language Foundation conducts a Review of Progress with each scholarship recipient every three months since the start of the scholarship. (Exact dates may vary subject to alignment with the academic calendar.)

Self Review

The scholarship recipient must complete a self-review consisting of answers to the following questions:

1. Describe the items you have worked on since the scholarship started (first review) or since last review. Keep in mind the following:

• Be factual and concrete. This is the place where you simply recap verifiable information. Give links to issues, pull requests, papers, project notes, presentations, any trail that documents your work.
• Try to keep a chronological order rather than order by assessed importance.
• Where possible give a rough estimate of the time taken to complete the task, especially if intermingled with other tasks.
• Document the outcome whether positive or negative (e.g. "Researched alternative xyz systems, reached the conclusion that ...")

2. Describe the things that went well.

• Time to be subjective. Document what caused you most satisfaction, and that you believe have the highest impact.
• Tell what you think made you productive and effective, that you could repeat systematically with good results
• Point out things in the general setup of the project (advisorship, mentorship, lab conditions, collaborations, hardware/software etc) that are working well.

3. Describe a few things that can be improved.

• What are the top 1-3 things that kept you from being maximally productive?
• What can your advisor and your mentor do to improve your morale and productivity?
• What do you plan to adjust for the next period?

Advisor Review

Following your self-review, your advisor will issue a review assessing the quality of your work. The review consists of a prose part describing the advisor's evaluation of your work and progress, and one of three marks:

• Greatly Exceeds Expectations: Student has performed above and beyond the usual expectations for his or her academic status. Targets should be reassessed for greater ambition (pursuit of a higher academic degree, submitting papers to more selective venues, expand project scope).
• Exceeds Expectations: Student has performed exceptionally well. Reassessment of project scope is in order.
• Meets All Expectations: Student's work is within the normal bounds of academic progress.
• Meets Most Expectations: Work has lagged a tad behind expected progress, but ground can be recovered in the next period by increasing focus and attention.
• Meets Some Expectations: There are issues with academic progress, and the academic advisor and Foundation mentor need to decide whether student can maintain the scholarship and under what conditions. Some recovery work may be required.

There cannot be two successive Meets Some Expectations marks in consecutive reviews. If a student review would result in a Meets Most Expectations mark, and the mark of the previous quarter was also Meets Most Expectations, then the mark drops automatically to Meets Some Expectations.