This paper examined the role of climate (e.g., interactions with others) in the skill development of engineering and physical science doctoral students. Skill development in graduate school often is connected to students’ primary funding mechanism, which enables students to interact with a research group or teaching team. Advisors also play a pivotal role in the engineering doctoral student experience; however, less is known about how positive mentoring influences specific skill development for engineering doctoral students. Analyzing data from the Graduate Student Funding Survey (n = 615), we focused analyses on three climate Factors (Advising climate; Faculty and staff climate; Peer climate) and specific skill
development variables (research, teamwork and project management, peer training and mentoring, and communication). We found that advising climate was statistically significant for all four career-related skills, faculty and staff climate for peer training and mentoring skills only, and peer climate for both peer training and mentoring and communication skills. Our findings highlight the importance of climate from a variety of sources within engineering doctoral programs for the development of career-related skills.
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Doctoral advisor selection processes in science, math, and engineering programs in the United States
Although advising relationships are key for doctoral student success, little research has addressed how they form. Understanding the formation of advising relationships can help contextualize their later development and ultimately support a student’s decision to persist in the doctorate. To understand relationship formation, the purpose of this qualitative study is to identify and describe the types of advisor–advisee selection processes that exist in engineering, science, and math doctoral programs and examine patterns across disciplines within those fields. We conducted interviews with doctoral program directors and engaged in document analysis of graduate student handbooks from 55 doctoral programs in the aforementioned fields in high research institutions across the United States. Using principal–agent theory as a theoretical lens, our findings showed that engineering programs tend to decentralize the advisor selection process by funding students across different funding sources upon enrollment. Contrariwise, science and math programs tended to fund all students in a cohort from a common funding source, which allowed students to have more time to gather information, meet, and select an advisor. These findings also show important nuances when comparing graduate education in these programs that directly impact the doctoral student experience and reiterates the necessity to study these fields separately.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10392832
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Science + Business Media
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- International Journal of STEM Education
- Volume:
- 10
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2196-7822
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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