Individual Development Plans (IDPs) provide a planning template that identifies both professional development and career objectives for students to actively work towards. IDPs can serve as tools to help facilitate communication between LEARN students and their peer, graduate, and faculty mentors.

Goals

An IDP can be one component of a broader mentoring experience. Specifically, it helps students:

• Create semester plans to reach their career goals
• Establish target dates for academic, research and professional milestones
• Set goals and sub-goals for the next year
• Define, in detail, the approach you plan to take in order to obtain the specific skills and strengths needed (e.g., courses, LEARN programs, technical skills, communication skills) along with anticipated time frames for obtaining those skills and strengths

Benefits

LEARN students will go through a goal-setting process to assist them in developing short-term and long-term career goals. This will give students a clearer sense of short-term expectations and help identify milestones along the way to achieving specific long-term objectives. The IDP also serves as a tool to provide structure to conversations between LEARN staff, mentors and LEARN students.

LEARN has created an inventory* for each student to honestly and authentically rate their knowledge, skills and abilities. Each IDP Assessment will assist you in creating a road map for each semester in preparation for your professional goals after UCF (e.g., graduate school, professional school or entry into industry).

Timeline

*Adapted from the UCF McNair Scholars Program