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1. Surviving, thriving, departing, and the hidden competencies of engineering graduate school

   https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20498  

   Zerbe, Ellen ; Sallai, Gabriella ; Berdanier, Catherine G. P. ( December 2022 , Journal of Engineering Education)

   While researchers in graduate engineering education are beginning to study facets of student experiences as they relate to attrition and persistence, theoretical applications of thriving theory have not been applied to graduate education contexts. Literature addresses students who persist and those who depart, inherently making assumptions that students who persist are doing well.

   The purpose of this article was to understand graduate student well‐being within students that persist and depart from the engineering PhD through an adapted model of the Spreitzer et al.'s Socially Embedded Model for Thriving at Work.

   Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 64 current and former engineering PhD students, representing various stages of the PhD, status of persistence, questioning departure, or having left a PhD program. Interview transcripts were analyzed using an abductive analysis approach.

   An expanded model for thriving in graduate school was developed. While this study contextualizes the core elements of thriving theory (context features, agentic behaviors, and produced resources), we propose that the mechanisms for thriving in graduate school lie in interactions across these themes in processes we call Adapting, Internalizing, and Cultivating. We also reveal the presence of hidden competencies (from the point of view of the graduate student participants) that facilitate these transitions.

   Thriving in graduate school is an interconnected process which has not been explored in the context of engineering. This study shows how even students who persist in their degree may only be surviving, rather than thriving.

    

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2. Investigating the tension between persistence and well‐being in engineering doctoral programs

   https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20526  

   Shanachilubwa, Kanembe ; Sallai, Gabriella ; Berdanier, Catherine G. P. ( May 2023 , Journal of Engineering Education)

   While studies examining graduate engineering student attrition have grown more prevalent, there is an incomplete understanding of the plight faced by persisting students. As mental health and well‐being crises emerge in graduate student populations, it is important to understand how students conceptualize their well‐being in relation to their decisions to persist or depart from their program.

   The purpose of this article is to characterize the well‐being of students who endured overwhelming difficulties in their doctoral engineering programs. The PERMA‐V framework of well‐being theory proposes that well‐being is a multifaceted construct comprised ofpositive emotion,engagement,relationships,meaning,accomplishment, andvitality.

   Data were collected in a mixed‐methods research design through two rounds of qualitative semistructured interviews and a survey‐based PERMA‐V profiling instrument. Interview data were analyzed thematically using the PERMA‐V framework as an a priori coding schema and narrative configuration and analysis.

   The narratives demonstrated the interconnectedness between the different facets of well‐being and how they were influenced by various experiences the participants encountered. The participants in this study faced prolonged and extreme adversity. By understanding how the multiple dimensions of well‐being theory manifested in their narratives, we better understood and interpreted how these participants chose to persist.

    

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3. “If I knew what else I should do, I would have left by now:” Two engineering PhD students’ experiences with Master’s-level departure

   Zerbe, E. ; Berdanier, C.G.P. ( October 2019 , IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference)

   This Research Full Paper presents two examples of doctoral engineering attrition. To date, little research has been conducted on the many compounding factors that lead to attrition in graduate programs. In this paper, we present the narratives of two doctoral PhD students, Kelsey and Amy, who were deciding on departing from the engineering PhD. These narratives embody a deeper investigation of academic self-concept development through graduate school, with a focus on the decision-making processes to continue in the PhD program or decide to depart with a Master’s degree. At the time of the interviews, both participants were still enrolled in their programs, but one had definite plans to depart and left shortly after the interview. This study is one of the first that highlights the role of the Master's degree as an off-ramp from the engineering doctorate and lends insight to narratives surrounding attrition in engineering: Despite academic success in their courses and successful research progress, these participants decided to depart even after passing significant milestones such as qualifying exams. This research presents the beginning of a larger research project with a goal of generating a more complete narrative of the attrition process for the students, with an explicit focus on Master's-level departure. 

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4. Correlations between graduate student writing concepts and processes and certainty of career trajectories

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2018.8658678  

   Berdanier, Catherine G.P. ; Zerbe, Ellen ( October 2018 , 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE))

   At the graduate level, most milestones are based on the ability to write for an academic audience, whether that be for dissertation proposals, publications, or funding opportunities. Writing scholars often discuss the process by which graduate students learn to join their academic “discourse communities” through academic literacies theory. Graduate attrition researchers relate the feeling of belonging with persistence in doctoral programs; however, there has not to date been any research that directly studies engineering writing attitudes and perceptions with student career trajectories, persistence, or attrition. To meet this need, this paper presents research from a larger study analyzing graduate level engineering writing and attrition. The explicit objective of this paper is to present quantitative data relating current graduate engineering students' attitudes, processes, and concepts of academic writing with the certainty of their career trajectory. Five scales measuring aspects of writing were deployed to engineering programs at ten research intensive universities across the United States, with a final total of n=621 graduate student respondents that represent early-career, mid-career, and late-career stages of the graduate timeline. Results indicate that graduate student processes and conceptions of engineering writing correlate with the likelihood of pursuing careers in various engineering sectors after completing their graduate degree programs. 

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5. Investigating the Formation of Engineers and the Future Professoriate: Linking Writing Approaches and Attitudes to Doctoral Socialization, Persistence, and Attrition

   Berdanier, Catherine G. ( June 2019 , 126th ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   This poster reports on results to date of an ongoing NSF RFE Grant, entitled “Investigating the Formation of Engineers and the Future Professoriate: Linking Writing Approaches and Attitudes to Doctoral Socialization, Persistence, and Attrition.” The objective of this study is to investigate the linkage between engineering writing and disciplinary discourse with other mechanisms of engineering graduate socialization, such as identity formation, socialization, persistence, and desire to pursue academic careers. This study is designed as an embedded exploratory mixed methods study of current graduate engineering students and recent non-completers that seek to answer the following research questions: 1. How do graduate students at various stages in their PhD programs in engineering perceive the role of academic writing as it relates to academic socialization and success in future academic careers? 2. How are these perceptions different or similar for graduate students who are considering leaving or have left their PhD programs before graduating? 3. Can existing surveys of writing concepts, attitudes, and self-efficacies predict students’ risk for attrition? 

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