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1. How do departments support their underrepresented minority doctoral students? Are they doing enough?

   Brent, R; Schimmel, KA; Gumpertz, M. (January 2021, CoNECD - Collaborative Network for Computing and Engineering Diversity - Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   A major barrier to increasing the percentage of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty in STEM fields is the small number of URM applicants for academic positions. One factor contributing to this situation is that the two-year attrition rate of URM doctoral students is nearly 50%, substantially greater than the rate for non-URM students at most institutions. Many efforts have been made to decrease the attrition, most involving direct work with doctoral students and others concentrating on institutional changes such naming a high-level administrator to coordinate recruitment and retention efforts. Often lacking in these efforts are attempts to change faculty attitudes and practices that negatively affect student retention. Three public universities including one HBCU are currently carrying out a five-year project to develop and pilot-test a department-level process to fill this gap. Why the focus on the department level? Since URM students spend most of their time in their departments as they take classes, attend seminars, conduct research, and interact informally with department faculty, staff, and other graduate students, the climate they experience and the support they receive can have a major impact on their success. In addition, changes in a department can last well beyond the end of a grant. When interventions address students directly, once they graduate there may be no lasting change in the department. When faculty attitudes and mentoring practices change, on the other hand, the changes may last and continue to help students succeed long after the grant expires. The project seeks to help department faculty increase their understanding of the issues facing underrepresented minorities in doctoral programs, identify and remedy the departmental practices that may be hindering URM student success, and examine and improve their own mentoring practices. In the project, six cohorts of faculty members and both URM and non-URM doctoral students—two cohorts at each participating university—will be assembled and surveyed. The faculty members will be asked how their departments address recruitment and retention of URM students, how they personally support and mentor their URM students, and how welcoming and supportive of URM students they perceive their department to be. The students will be asked to express their level of satisfaction with their coursework and their relationships with faculty and other graduate students, describe the learning opportunities and mentoring they have received, and discuss how welcoming and supportive of URM students their departments have been. To initiate the gathering of baseline information, the first cohort—79 faculty members, 16 URM students, and 94 non-URM students from six STEM departments at one of the universities—was surveyed. This presentation will report and discuss the results. 

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2. How do departments support their underrepresented minority doctoral students? Are they doing enough?

   Brent, R; Schimmel, KA; Gumpertz, M. (January 2021, CoNECD - Collaborative Network for Computing and Engineering Diversity - Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   A major barrier to increasing the percentage of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty in STEM fields is the small number of URM applicants for academic positions. One factor contributing to this situation is that the two-year attrition rate of URM doctoral students is nearly 50%, substantially greater than the rate for non-URM students at most institutions. Many efforts have been made to decrease the attrition, most involving direct work with doctoral students and others concentrating on institutional changes such naming a high-level administrator to coordinate recruitment and retention efforts. Often lacking in these efforts are attempts to change faculty attitudes and practices that negatively affect student retention. Three public universities including one HBCU are currently carrying out a five-year project to develop and pilot-test a department-level process to fill this gap. Why the focus on the department level? Since URM students spend most of their time in their departments as they take classes, attend seminars, conduct research, and interact informally with department faculty, staff, and other graduate students, the climate they experience and the support they receive can have a major impact on their success. In addition, changes in a department can last well beyond the end of a grant. When interventions address students directly, once they graduate there may be no lasting change in the department. When faculty attitudes and mentoring practices change, on the other hand, the changes may last and continue to help students succeed long after the grant expires. The project seeks to help department faculty increase their understanding of the issues facing underrepresented minorities in doctoral programs, identify and remedy the departmental practices that may be hindering URM student success, and examine and improve their own mentoring practices. In the project, six cohorts of faculty members and both URM and non-URM doctoral students—two cohorts at each participating university—will be assembled and surveyed. The faculty members will be asked how their departments address recruitment and retention of URM students, how they personally support and mentor their URM students, and how welcoming and supportive of URM students they perceive their department to be. The students will be asked to express their level of satisfaction with their coursework and their relationships with faculty and other graduate students, describe the learning opportunities and mentoring they have received, and discuss how welcoming and supportive of URM students their departments have been. To initiate the gathering of baseline information, the first cohort—79 faculty members, 16 URM students, and 94 non-URM students from six STEM departments at one of the universities—was surveyed. This presentation will report and discuss the results. 

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3. The Advisor-Advisee Relationship in Engineering and Computer Science Ph.D. Programs: Understanding Who Benefits and How

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--44808  

   Brawner, Catherine E.; Stancescu, Andrea; Grasso, Maureen; Huet, Yvette M.; Brent, Rebecca; Merriweather, Lisa (February 2023, Proceedings of the 2023 Collaborative Network for Computing and Engineering Diversity)

   Doctoral advisors are key to ensuring positive outcomes, especially for underrepresented students in STEM fields. In this study, graduate faculty and doctoral students with three or more years in their programs in the AGEP-NC Alliance were surveyed about the advising practices they engaged in (faculty) or received (students). Faculty were also asked about their confidence advising graduate students generally as well as students who are different from themselves demographically and culturally. Students were also asked about their relationship with their advisors. Findings show that faculty are significantly more confident advising students generally than they are advising students who are different from themselves. On all common measures of advising practices, faculty report that they engage in those practices significantly more often than students report experiencing the advising practice from their advisor. Black, Hispanic, and Native American U.S. citizen students report receiving research guidance from their advisors significantly less than White and Asian U.S. citizens or international students. International students are offered teaching opportunities significantly more often than White and Asian students. There was a significant difference in whether students understood their advisor’s expectations and Black, Hispanic, and Native American students were significantly less likely than international students to report that their advisor respects their contributions. We find that there is a clear lack of alignment between faculty confidence and student perceptions of faculty advising. This gap is especially clear in key advising behaviors like research and presentation guidance. Given that the goal of the AGEP program is to prepare underrepresented U.S. citizen students for the professoriate, both the lack of research guidance and lack of opportunity to build teaching experience for these students is troubling. Change is thus required at both the departmental level to improve the climate for all students as well as at the individual faculty advisor level to ensure that all students are treated equitably with high quality advising. 

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4. Physics Ph.D. student perspectives on the importance and difficulty of finding a research group

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.20.010136  

   Verostek, Mike; Miller, Casey W; Zwickl, Benjamin M (May 2024, Physical Review Physics Education Research)

   Joining a research group is one of the most important events on a graduate student’s path to becoming an independent physics researcher and earning a Ph.D. However, graduate students’ perspectives on the experience of finding a research group are not well documented in the literature. Understanding these perspectives is crucial for evaluating whether departments are providing students with adequate support while they search for a research group, and how difficulties during this process contribute to attrition. Semistructured interviews with $N=20$first and second year physics Ph.D. students reveal that incoming graduate students see joining a research group as a significant decision, and recognize that it may impact whether they will be able to complete the program. We found that students who struggled to find a group felt isolated and worried about falling behind their peers, whereas students who were able to immerse themselves in a positive group environment reported increased sense of belonging in their programs. The process of finding a research group often held differential importance for students identifying as women and nonbinary, who at times reported having to deprioritize their preferred research topic in order to be part of a more inclusive working environment. Although incoming graduate students characterized joining a research group as a significant decision, they often felt unprepared to make it. Moreover, they perceived an overall lack of guidance and structure from their departments, and characterized coursework as a barrier to searching for a group. Our findings suggest that providing students with better support during their group search process could help improve retention, particularly for traditionally underrepresented students, and improve students’ overall satisfaction in their graduate programs. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

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5. Identifying qualities of physics graduate students valued by faculty

   https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2019.pr.Owens  

   Owens, Lindsay; Zwickl, Benjamin M.; Franklin, Scott V.; Miller, Casey W. (January 2020, Physics Education Research Conference 2019)

   Faculty members involved in graduate admissions decisions have to determine who will be offered admissions to their respective graduate programs. In this study, we interviewed faculty at four institutions who currently serve or have served on their program's graduate admissions committee. The focus of this study was twofold: first, to explore what qualities faculty value in graduate students and second, to identify what sources of evidence faculty utilize in determining if a student possesses a desired quality. Results from these interviews showed that while qualities such as content knowledge and programming skills were valued, non-cognitive qualities such as self-motivation, resilience, and self-learning were also highly desired. The faculty noted that while current admissions practices can easily identify if a student has taken certain coursework, they typically lack the means to quickly assess non-cognitive qualities, which must often be inferred from the contents of personal statements and letters of recommendation. These results suggest that transparency on the part of graduate programs to better advertise the qualities they desire will assist letter writers and students writing personal statements to increase the impact of their application materials. 

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