skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


Title: The Burden of Survival: How Doctoral Students in Computing Bridge the Chasm of Inaccessibility
Despite efforts to support students with disabilities in higher education, few continue to pursue doctoral degrees in computing. We conducted an interview study with 12 blind and low vision, and 7 deaf and hard of hearing current and former doctoral students in computing to understand how graduate students adjust to inaccessibility and ineffective accommodations. We asked participants how they worked around inaccessibility, managed ineffective accommodations, and advocated for tools and services. Employing a lens of ableism in our analysis, we found that participants’ extra effort to address accessibility gaps gave rise to a burden of survival, which they sustained to meet expectations of graduate-level productivity. We recommend equitable solutions that acknowledge taken-for-granted workarounds and that actively address inaccessibility in the graduate school context.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1926209
PAR ID:
10267571
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1 to 13
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ; (, In The 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '20))
    null (Ed.)
    Increasingly, support for students with disabilities in post-secondary education has boosted enrollment and graduates rates. Yet, such successes are not translated to doctoral degrees. For example, in 2018, the National Science Foundation reported 3% of math and computer science doctorate recipients identified as having a visual limitation while 1.2% identified as having a hearing limitation. To better understand why few students with disabilities pursue PhDs in computing and related fields, we conducted an interview study with 19 current and former graduate students who identified as blind or low vision, or deaf or hard of hearing. We asked participants about challenges or barriers they encountered in graduate school. We asked about accommodations they received, or did not receive, and about different forms of support. We found that a wide range of inaccessibility issues in research, courses, and in managing accommodations impacted student progress. Contributions from this work include identifying two forms of access inequality that emerged: (1) access differential: the gap between the access that non/disabled students experience, and (2) inequitable access: the degree of inadequacy of existing accommodations to address inaccessibility. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; ; ; (, ASSETS '21: The 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility)
    Few students with disabilities transition from undergraduate to graduate programs. Graduate students often receive ineffective and insufficient accommodations, including lack of support specific to graduate students, because disability services policies are shaped by undergraduate experiences. To understand how disability services offices accommodate graduate students: we (1) critically analyzed disability services websites of 18 U.S. institutions, and (2) interviewed 17 disability services staff. Disability services websites publicly present institutional accommodation policies and guidelines, and staff are responsible for identifying, providing, and implementing reasonable accommodations. We found that policies may be interpreted differently depending on specific student circumstances. We discuss our findings in two main themes: (a) Policies and attitudes ascribed to disability, technology, and faculty, and (b) Impacts of policies and perspectives on accommodation decisions for graduate students. The contributions of this work include an empirical investigation of institutional support for disabled graduate students and suggestions for how to improve support from disability services offices to empower students. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; ; (, ASEE Conferences)
    Faculty advisors perform a vital role in doctoral students’ experiences in their programs, but they often lack training in how to provide essential psychosocial support to their doctoral advisees. This can result in negative graduate experiences, especially for underrepresented groups. While research into psychological safety in the corporate world has highlighted its importance, the importance of psychological safety is less understood in academia, particularly in the context of graduate engineering education. This study seeks to understand how engineering faculty advisors influence the psychological safety of doctoral students they advise and the impact of psychological safety on the student’s graduate experience. We use a mixed methods design and in-depth qualitative study to address the research aims. The mixed methods design uses a survey followed by exploratory interviews. Additional narrative interviews will be conducted to gather rich data on student experiences with psychological safety and how they evolve over time. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ; ; ; (, Cogent Education)
    Current structures of STEM graduate programs raise questions about addressing graduates’ interest in multiple career paths, and how programs prepare graduates for positions increasingly available in varied occupations. This problem is addressed through an innovative doctoral program in engineering, Pathways to Entrepreneurship (PAtENT), which works to develop a scalable alternative student-centered framework. This research explores how this program responds to calls for graduate STEM education to address changes in science and engineering, the nature of the workforce, career goals, and how program components build an entrepreneurial mindset. A mixed-methods design includes a curriculum analysis showing alignment of program components to recommendations for Ph.D. STEM programs from the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Direct measures include surveys and interviews developed for current doctoral students and faculty to describe students’ and faculty perspectives about program components, particularly entrepreneurship and the patent process. The curriculum analysis shows strong alignment of the PAtENT program components and activities to the ten elements of the National Academies’ recommendations. A survey of graduate students in engineering, computing, and business show strong measures in engineering and entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Interviews of program participants and faculty demonstrate strong interest in patents and developing entrepreneurship. This innovative program in engineering focusing on obtaining a patent as a capstone shows potential to reform doctoral studies, so candidates are prepared not only for academic careers but a range of industry and government work environments. This work will lead to development of a model for other graduate STEM programs. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; (, IEEE Frontiers in Education)
    This research full paper explores interview data with N=36 engineering graduate students to understand the factors and characteristics of graduate socialization, with the effort of better preparing students to succeed in doctoral programs. This research is motivated by the alarming fact that nearly one-third of engineering doctoral students will not finish their PhD programs; however, little research has been conducted on the various factors that can lead to attrition or enhance persistence in graduate engineering programs. This paper presents the results from the interview phase of a larger study investigating doctoral engineering socialization, attrition, persistence, and career trajectories. The participants for this study come from large research-intensive universities across the United States, and were sampled for maximum variation in a number of different categories, including stage in their doctoral program, gender, and race. Upon collecting and analyzing interview data from our participants through constant comparative and content analysis methods, several themes arose including concerns for mental health in engineering graduate students and uncertainties with joining the culture of academia in their future careers. Further, although the participants for this study are currently graduate students who anticipate completing their PhDs, nearly half of the participants discussed strongly considered leaving at some point. This study adds to the body of literature surrounding engineering attrition and the underlying issues driving engineering PhDs away from academic engineering careers. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email