Evaluation and feedback on a student's progress are important both to the student and to the faculty. Students need information on their overall progress to make long range plans. The faculty need to make evaluations to advise students, to make support decisions, and to write recommendations to potential employers.
The faculty meet at the end of each semester to make a formal evaluation of each student in the Ph.D. program. For historical reasons this meeting is called ``Black Friday.'' The purpose of having all the faculty meet together to discuss all the students is to ensure uniformity and consistency in evaluating across all the different areas, by all the different advisors, throughout the years of the Ph.D. program in CSD as it inevitably changes. The meeting consists of two parts, one in which subsets of the faculty from different research areas (Artificial Intelligence, Computer Systems, Programming Languages, Software Systems, and Theory) meet, and the other in which the entire faculty meet.
The faculty measure each student's progress against the goal of completing the Ph.D. program in a reasonable period of time. The evaluation considers all components of the program using indicators and information sources described below. Through a Black Friday letter the faculty inform students of the results of this evaluation, which may include specific recommendations for future work or requirements that must be met for continued participation in the program.