Composition-and-Rhetoric-Doctoral-Progress-Planner

README

RCWS Doctoral Degree Planner

An adaptable, accessible planning and progress-tracking workbook for rhetoric, composition, and writing studies (RCWS) doctoral students. It grew out of the appendix to Gabby Wilson-Kopko’s research on “Navigating Uncertain Terrain” — the missing documentation, vanishing institutional knowledge, and once-and-never-again explanations that make degree progress harder to track, especially for disabled graduate students, but that create friction for everyone.

The workbook doesn’t assume a single normative timeline or career outcome. You set your own pace (a traditional 5-year plan or an extended one of 8+ years) and pick from six career tracks, and the planner adjusts what’s relevant to you.

Getting the file

This is an Excel template (.xltx), not a regular workbook. Download it and open it the way you’d open any template — Excel will start you off with a new, untitled copy, so you can fill it in freely without risking the original file that other students will download after you.

  1. Click the file in this repository and Download the RCWS Doctoral Degree EXCEL Planner here.
  2. Double-click to open it in Excel (or “Use Template” if your version prompts you). This creates a fresh copy for you.
  3. Save your copy under your own filename before you start editing.

Excel Online and recent desktop versions of Excel both support .xltx templates. If your version of Excel won’t open it directly, you can also open it and immediately use “Save As” to save your own .xlsx copy before editing.

How to use it

  1. Start on the Dashboard tab. Fill in your name and program details, and choose your career track from the dropdown. Your track selection drives what’s highlighted on the Degree Planner.
  2. Do your planning on the Degree Planner tab. It lists every requirement and suggested milestone from the guide. Edit “Target Year” for any item to fit your own pace, and update “Status” as you make progress.
  3. Focus on your track. Rows tagged “All Tracks” apply to everyone. Rows tagged with a specific career track are dimmed in the “Relevant to Selected Track?” column when they don’t match your Dashboard selection — use that column’s filter arrow and choose “Show” to see only what applies to you.
  4. Watch your progress. The Dashboard updates automatically with totals and percentages overall, by year, by category, and for your selected track, as soon as you change a Status on the Degree Planner.
  5. Look for pale gold cells. These are fill-in fields for your own institution’s deadlines, names, and details. Everything else can be edited too — nothing is locked.
  6. Three tabs are just for you and aren’t counted toward degree progress: Paper Trail & Patterns, the Identity & Values Check-In, and the optional Mentoring Expectations Agreement on Committee & Mentors.

Status legend

Symbol Meaning
○ Not Started
◐ In Progress
✓ Complete
(pale gold shading) Fill-in cell — add your own details

What’s in each tab

Tab What it’s for
Start Here Overview, instructions, and the accessibility notes below.
Dashboard Your info, career-track selector, and live progress summary.
Glossary Field-specific acronyms and terms (WPA, WAC, IDP, Prospectus, etc.).
Field Resources Directory of RCWS-field organizations, journals, conferences, publishers/book series, and listservs, with links.
Degree Planner The master flexible checklist — requirements and suggestions, with editable Target Year, Status, and Actual Completion Date so you can see your own pace over time.
Career Tracks Reference Full detail behind each of the six career tracks, for comparing paths before you choose.
Committee & Mentors Guidance for selecting a committee, a fillable list of your mentors by role, and an optional Mentoring Expectations Agreement template.
Semester Planner A term-by-term course-planning grid for Years 1–8.
Individual Dev Plan A yearly goal-setting template across degree, skills, career, personal, and funding goals.
Identity & Values Check-In Optional, once-a-year reflection on disciplinary identity, teaching persona, professional identity, and personal/spiritual growth — separate from tracked progress.
Job Market Dossier What goes in an academic job application packet, with length/audience notes.
Paper Trail & Patterns Optional logs: a documentation record for accommodation/funding decisions, and a private space to notice recurring patterns.
Lists Backend dropdown values that power the workbook’s menus. You shouldn’t need to touch this tab, but it’s there if you want to see how the dropdowns work.

Career tracks

Pick the one closest to your goals on the Dashboard — you can always change it later:

See the Career Tracks Reference tab for the full year-by-year detail behind each one.

Accessibility

This workbook is built for screen-reader and keyboard navigation:

If you run into an accessibility barrier using this workbook, please open an issue in this repository so it can be fixed for the next person.

A note on the blank fields

The blank deadline and detail fields throughout the workbook are intentional, not an oversight. Documentation like this only works when it’s grounded in your own institution’s actual requirements and deadlines — a generic timeline can’t substitute for that. Treat the pale gold cells as an invitation to fill in what’s true for your program, not as something missing.

Background

This planner adapts the appendix to Gabby Wilson-Kopko’s research on transparency and bureaucratic barriers in RCWS doctoral education, drawn from a qualitative study of disabled graduate students’ professional identity development. If you’re citing this resource or want to read the fuller argument behind it, please refer to the full Composition Studies article: [link].

License

Free to download and distribute with attribution — Gabriella Wilson-Kopko

gwilsonkopko.com

Feedback

This is meant to be adapted. If something doesn’t fit your program or you make changes to your workbook.