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Doctoral students experience high rates of mental health distress and dropout; however, the mental health and wellness of engineering doctoral students is understudied. Studies of student persistence, wellness, and success often aggregate fields together, such as by studying all engineering students. Thus, little work has considered the experiences of biomedical engineering (BME) doctoral students, despite differences between doctoral BME research, course content, and career expectations compared with other engineering disciplines. In this qualitative interview case study, we explore stressors present in the BME graduate experience that are unique from engineering students in other disciplines. Methods We analyzed a longitudinal interview study of doctoral engineering students across four timepoints within a single academic year, consisting of a subsample (n=6) of doctoral students in a BME discipline, among a larger sample of engineering doctoral students (N=55). BME students in the sample experienced some themes generated from a larger thematic analysis differently compared with other engineering disciplines. These differences are presented and discussed, grounded in a model of workplace stress. Results BME participants working in labs with biological samples expressed a lack of control over the timing and availability of materials for their research projects. BME participants also had more industry-focused career plans and described more commonly coming to BME graduate studies from other fields (e.g., another engineering major) and struggling with the scope and content of their introductory coursework. A common throughline for the stressors was the impact of the interdisciplinary nature of BME programs, to a greater extent compared with other engineering student experiences in our sample. Conclusions We motivate changes for researchers, instructors, and policymakers which specifically target BME students and emphasize the importance of considering studies at various unit levels (university department level vs college level vs full institution) when considering interventions targeting student stress and wellness.
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PhD Student Funding Patterns: Placing Biomedical, Biological, and Biosystems Engineering in the Context of Engineering Sub-disciplines, Biological Sciences, and Other STEM Disciplines
Abstract Whether doctoral students are funded primarily by fellowships, research assistantships, or teaching assistantships impacts their degree completion, time to degree, learning outcomes, and short- and long-term career outcomes. Variations in funding patterns have been studied at the broad field level but not comparing engineering sub-disciplines. We addressed two research questions: How do PhD student funding mechanisms vary across engineering sub-disciplines? And how does variation in funding mechanisms across engineering sub-disciplines map onto the larger STEM disciplinary landscape? We analyzed 103,373 engineering and computing responses to the U.S. Survey of Earned Doctorates collected between 2007 and 2016. We conducted analysis of variance with Bonferroni post hoc comparisons to examine variation in funding across sub-disciplines. Then, we conducted a k-means cluster analysis on percentage variables for fellowship, research, and teaching assistantship funding mechanism with STEM sub-discipline as the unit of analysis. A statistically significantly greater percentage of biomedical/biological engineering doctoral students were funded via a fellowship, compared to every other engineering sub-discipline. Consequently, biomedical/biological engineering had significantly lower proportions of students supported via research and teaching assistantships than nearly all other engineering sub-disciplines. We identified five clusters. The majority of engineering sub-disciplines grouped together into a cluster with high research assistantships and low teaching assistantships. Biomedical/biological engineering clustered in the high fellowships grouping with most other biological sciences but no other engineering sub-disciplines. Biomedical/biological engineering behaves much more like biological and life sciences in utilizing fellowships to fund graduate students, far more than other engineering sub-disciplines. Our study provides further evidence of the prevalence of fellowships in life sciences and how it stretches into biomedical/biological engineering. The majority of engineering sub-disciplines relied more on research assistantships to fund graduate study. The lack of uniformity provides an opportunity to diversify student experiences during their graduate programs but also necessitates an awareness to the advantages and disadvantages that different funding portfolios can bestow on students.
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- PAR ID:
- 10497057
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Science + Business Media
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Biomedical Engineering Education
- Volume:
- 4
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 2730-5937
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 199-210
- Size(s):
- p. 199-210
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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