Guide to Understanding Graduate Student Milestones in UAccess

This general guide is meant to assist Graduate Coordinators and faculty in understanding the Student Milestones for graduate students. Specific questions may be directed to the program’s degree counselor in the Graduate Student Academic Services office (GSAS).

Overview

The Student Milestones available in UAccess Student enable departments to view at a glance a student’s progress in completing the required steps with the Graduate College’s GSAS office. In UAccess, student milestones are found under

RECORDS AND ENROLLMENT> ENROLL STUDENTS> STUDENT MILESTONES

If a student has more than one entry on this screen, choose the GDEG entry to view graduate degree milestones or the GCRT entry to view graduate certificate milestones.

Information provided by students on their GradPath forms is recorded in the milestones and automatically updated when new information is provided on future forms. Milestones update overnight with information from approved forms. (And information about steps completed on paper forms approved prior to GradPath is also recorded in the milestones.) Departments have read-only access to the milestones. Milestones are initiated when the student’s first GradPath is approved (except the self-approving Responsible Conduct of Research form).

There are three categories of graduate milestones used: Certificate, Master’s and Doctoral. The milestones tracked for each of these program/degree levels are different, reflecting the different required steps for each. If a student has been in more than one program, there will be a set of milestones for each program.

Certificate Milestone

There is only one milestone for Certificate students:

  1. CPOS – GRAD Certificate Plan of Study

Master’s Milestones

The following milestones are used to track master’s and specialist students:

  1. MPOS – GRAD Master’s/Specialist Plan of Study
  2. CDR – GRAD Master’s/Specialist Committee (Committee Appointment form)
  3. DEPTREQS – GRAD Departmental Requirements (completion of departmental requirements
  4. IRB – GRAD Human/Animal Subjects (advisor’s confirmation of Responsible Conduct of Research or IRB approval for a thesis)
  5. THESIS – GRAD Thesis (submission of master’s thesis for archiving)

Doctoral Milestones

The following milestones are used to track doctoral students:

  1. DPOS – GRAD Doctoral Plan of Study
  2. WRTTNS – GRAD Written Exams (Written Comprehensive Exams)
  3. LANGREQ – GRAD Language Requirement (only used by departments that have this requirement – see General Notes below)
  4. ORAL COMP – GRAD Oral Comprehensive Exam
  5. ADVANCED – GRAD Advanced to Candidacy
  6. PROSPECTUS – GRAD Prospectus/Proposal confirmation
  7. CMMTAPPT – GRAD Committee Appointment form (for the Final Defense)
  8. IRB – GRAD Human/Animal Subjects (advisor’s confirmation of Responsible Conduct of Research and IRB approval for the dissertation)
  9. DEFENSE – GRAD Final Oral Defense (i.e. dissertation defense or final oral exam)
  10. DISS – GRAD Dissertation (submission of dissertation DMA document, or DNP practice inquiry for archiving)

Tabs in Milestones

Each milestone has two tabs, though both tabs are not used for every milestone. The tabs are “Student Milestones,” and “Committee Members”. (Note: Milestones are used for both Graduate and Undergraduate tracking, and not all items on the tabs are used for graduate students.)

Student Milestones

The following items are found on the “Student Milestones” tab:

  • Milestone Level – The value displayed in this field shows whether the milestone has been completed, initiated, or is still required (i.e. not yet initiated).
  • Academic Plan – The degree and major, e.g. ANTHPHD. (Student may have more than one set of degree milestones if they have pursued more than one degree. Using “Include History” allows user to view all sets and navigate between them.)
  • Description and Formal Description – Identifies the milestone being viewed.
  • Milestone Title – used to record a thesis or dissertation tile when appropriate.
  • Comment – Comments appropriate to the milestone can be entered by the GSAS Counselor. Example: “$35 candidacy fees billed to UA Bursar’s account. 7/14/16” (On the Advanced milestone)
  • Advisor/Evaluator – the Graduate Coordinator and GSAS Counselor names may be entered here.
  • Attempts (at the very bottom of the form) – Shows the “Milestone Complete” status - “Completed”, “In Progress” or “Not Completed”, with the date of the last action in the Date Attempted field.
    • Example: A Doctoral Oral Defense that is scheduled but the Results have not yet been reported will show a Milestone Complete status of “In Progress”, with the date of the scheduled defense in the date field. When the Results have been submitted and approved, the status will be updated to “Completed”.
    • Note that there is also a “Milestone Complete” field in the upper portion of the milestone which does NOT always get updated properly. The correct status of the milestone shows in the Attempts portion at the bottom of the milestone.

Committee Members

The following items are found on the “Committee Members” tab:

  • The major advisor for a Plan of study
  • The committee members for the Oral Comps
  • The committee members for the Final Oral Defense
  • The committee members for a master’s student (on CDR milestone) or student’s advisor if no committee reported. (Thesis committees must be reported, but otherwise can be committee or advisor.)

Each member’s role for the committee or milestone in question is noted to the right of their name.

General Notes

  • A step that has not been initiated (i.e. the corresponding GradPath form has not yet been received by the Graduate College) will generally have blank fields for the milestone data. The Milestone Level under “Student Milestones” will show it as ‘Conversion’ or ‘Required’. (‘Conversion’ just means that the milestone was automatically generated when data was converted form our old database and it will be changed to Required, Problem or Approved as the GradPath forms come in.)
  • If no milestones are found for a student (or for a particular degree program), that indicates that the student has not yet filed any forms for the degree. Contact your Degree Counselor in the GSAS office if you have questions about this.
  • Remember that when GradPath forms are approved, the relevant milestones will update overnight (not immediately).
  • The PROSPECTUS milestone tracks the department’s confirmation a doctoral student has an approved prospectus or proposal for the dissertation (or relevant final work) on file. A student whose comprehensive exam results were submitted on the old paper form is not subject to this requirement – the milestone will show Milestone Level as “CONVERSION” and Milestone Complete value as “Completed.”
  • Not all departments have a Language Requirement. If a department does have a Language Requirement, the Graduate Coordinator will have access to update this milestone to track completion of this requirement. GSAS counselors no longer update this milestone, and the Graduate College does not track or enforce language requirements. If you need access to update the milestone, contact your GSAS counselor for details.

Example milestone:

Screenshot of example milestones