In an era of rising accountability, retention rates of graduate programs have come under scrutiny and student affairs professionals are being asked to help graduate students at increasing rates. In particular, Graduate Higher Education has done little to assess and understand graduate students' needs and experiences beyond the classroom. We conducted a formative needs assessment using multiple data collection tools and methods to better understand our graduate students, their needs and experiences at a public Carnegie classified Doctoral/Research University in the Rocky Mountain Region and to inform the development of a program we have created called Graduate Student Professional Development. In this study we discuss our program objectives, assessment purpose and process. We discuss how we integrated several data collection methods, describe outcomes, plans for integration across the university system and next steps to support the establishment of a sustainable program grounded in assessment practices and data driven programming decisions.#GraduateStudent #developmentalevaluation #CareerDevelopment #eval14 #professionaldevelopment #assessmentinpractice