Graduate Student Dashboard

The Graduate Student dashboard is built around the needs of masters and doctoral students. It centralizes thesis progress, advisor communications, coursework deadlines, and career development resources so you can manage your academic life from one place.

Dashboard Panels

Thesis Progress

This panel tracks your thesis or dissertation through defined stages: Proposal, Literature Review, Data Collection, Analysis, Writing, and Defense. A progress bar shows your current position, and you can update your stage at any time. Clicking the panel opens a detailed timeline with milestones and target dates.

Thesis progress tracker showing stage completion

Advisor Communications

A dedicated message stream between you and your advisor. You can share documents, ask questions, and log meeting notes directly within this panel. Unread messages are highlighted, and you can schedule meetings through the built-in calendar link.

This panel only shows communications routed through AcaTrove. If you and your advisor also communicate by email, consider forwarding key decisions here to keep a single record.

Coursework Deadlines

If you have linked your academic calendar, this panel displays upcoming assignment and exam dates. Items are color-coded by urgency: green for more than two weeks away, yellow for one to two weeks, and red for less than one week.

Publication Drafts

A list of manuscripts you are currently writing or co-authoring. Each entry shows the draft title, target journal, and last-edited date. Click any draft to open it in the AI Writing Assistant or the document editor.

Research Milestones

Custom milestones you define for your research program -- qualifying exams, IRB approvals, conference submissions, and similar checkpoints. You can add, edit, and reorder milestones from within the panel.

Career Development

Curated resources and action items for career preparation: fellowship deadlines, teaching opportunities, conference presentation slots, and job market timelines. AcaTrove surfaces relevant opportunities based on your discipline and research interests.

Recommended Workflows

1. Weekly check-in -- Review your Thesis Progress panel every week. Update your stage and milestones to keep your advisor informed automatically.
2. Draft management -- Use the Publication Drafts panel to track every manuscript. Link drafts to projects so your advisor can see them in their Student Progress panel.
3. Deadline triage -- At the start of each semester, populate Coursework Deadlines and Research Milestones so nothing falls through the cracks.

Full Graduate Student dashboard layout

Tips

• Your advisor sees a summary of your thesis stage and recent activity on their own dashboard. Keeping your milestones current reduces the need for status-update emails.
• Use the Start Writing quick action to open a new document pre-linked to your current project.
• Enable push notifications in Settings > Notifications to receive alerts for advisor messages and approaching deadlines.