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Pathfinder
Monitoring Progress Toward Your Degree
Pathfinder is Western's graduate student progress portfolio system. It helps you document your academic achievements, research activities, professional development, and future goals while providing a structured process for feedback and discussion with your supervisory committee.
What is Pathfinder?
Pathfinder is available through the SGPS Graduate Student Web Services Portal. It supports graduate students enrolled in multi-year, research-based programs. It enables students and their supervisory committees to document academic accomplishments and collaboratively plan for successful degree completion.The Pathfinder Portfolio offers a holistic view of graduate student progress across Western University’s diverse programs. It integrates data automatically retrieved from institutional systems with manually entered information that captures individual academic experiences.
Updating Your Pathfinder Portfolio
Your Pathfinder Portfolio includes both information that is automatically populated from university systems and information that you are responsible for maintaining.
Several sections are updated automatically and do not require student input, including:
- Registration history, courses, and grades
- Program milestones
- Financial support information
Students are responsible for updating the sections that reflect their academic, research, and professional development activities. Depending on your program, these sections may include:
- Scholarly activities
- Conference participation
- Academic travel
- Thesis progress
- Professional development
- Memberships
- Next steps and future goals
- Program-specific questions or requirements
Regularly updating your Portfolio ensures that your Supervisory Committee and Graduate Chair have an accurate understanding of your progress, achievements, and plans as they review your annual submission.
Submitting Your Pathfinder Portfolio
Your graduate program will notify you when it is time to submit your Pathfinder Portfolio for review. An email will be sent to your Western email account indicating that your Portfolio is available for submission and providing the submission deadline.
Although Portfolio submissions occur at designated times during the year, you can update your Portfolio at any time. Information entered throughout the year will be included when you submit your Portfolio for review.
To submit your Portfolio:
- Select Submit Portfolio from the Pathfinder menu.
- Review the information displayed in the Pre-submission Summary.
- Confirm the details of your submission and select Advance to Confirmation Page.
- Review your Portfolio one final time on the Confirmation Page.
- Select Submit Portfolio for Review to complete the submission process.
Once your Portfolio has been submitted, your Supervisory Committee will automatically receive notification that it is ready for review.
What Happens After You Submit Your Portfolio?
Once you submit your Portfolio in Pathfinder, it moves through a series of review and evaluation stages before the process is completed:
- Your Supervisory Committee is notified by email that your Portfolio has been submitted and is ready for review.
- Supervisors and committee members review your submission, including your reported progress, goals, and any concerns or questions you have raised.
- Each committee member may provide feedback on your progress and development within the program.
- Once all committee reviews are complete, the Portfolio is forwarded to your Graduate Chair (or equivalent) for evaluation.
- Your Graduate Chair reviews the committee's feedback to ensure it is appropriate, sufficient, and aligned with program expectations.
- The Graduate Chair may also provide additional feedback regarding your progress and future plans.
- After the Graduate Chair's evaluation is complete, the Portfolio is returned to you for acknowledgment.
- You will receive an email notification when the Portfolio is available for acknowledgment and review.
- You will be able to view all feedback provided by your Supervisory Committee and Graduate Chair.
- Pathfinder will ask you to acknowledge the report, indicate whether you have met with your supervisor(s) to discuss the feedback, and confirm whether you believe the report accurately reflects your progress and plans.
- If you disagree with the feedback provided, you will have an opportunity to submit your comments and response as part of the acknowledgment process.
- Once your acknowledgment is submitted, the review is archived in Pathfinder and the Portfolio submission process is complete.