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1. PhDepression: Examining How Graduate Research and Teaching Affect Depression in Life Sciences PhD Students

   https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.21-03-0077  

   Gin, Logan E.; Wiesenthal, Nicholas J.; Ferreira, Isabella; Cooper, Katelyn M. (September 2021, CBE—Life Sciences Education)

   Gardner, Grant Ean (Ed.)

   Graduate students are more than six times as likely to experience depression compared with the general population. However, few studies have examined how graduate school specifically affects depression. In this qualitative interview study of 50 life sciences PhD students from 28 institutions, we examined how research and teaching affect depression in PhD students and how depression in turn affects students’ experiences teaching and researching. Using inductive coding, we identified factors that either positively or negatively affected student depression. Graduate students more commonly mentioned factors related to research that negatively affected their depression and factors related to teaching that positively affected their depression. We identified four overarching aspects of graduate school that influenced student depression: the amount of structure in teaching and research, positive and negative reinforcement, success and failure, and social support and isolation. Graduate students reported that depression had an exclusively negative effect on their research, primarily hindering their motivation and self-confidence, but that it helped them to be more compassionate teachers. This work pinpoints specific aspects of graduate school that PhD programs can target to improve mental health among life sciences graduate students. 

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2. Building Transfer Student Interest in Computer Science PhDs: Examining an Advising Intervention Using a Staged Innovation Design

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-025-09843-9  

   Blaney, Jennifer_M; Feldon, David_F; Wofford, Annie_M; Litson, Kaylee (May 2025, Research in Higher Education)

   Abstract Community college transfer students represent a diverse and talented group to recruit to PhD and other graduate programs. Yet, little is known about practical strategies to support community college transfer students’ access to graduate training. Focusing specifically on transfer students in computer science and guided by social cognitive career theory, this manuscript draws on survey data from over 200 community college transfer students and utilizes a staged innovation design to examine a new intervention designed to pique transfer students’ interests in PhD study. Findings suggest that brief targeted interventions can significantly predict transfer students’ perceptions about PhD study, but that more sustained efforts will likely be necessary to influence transfer students’ more tangible degree plans. In addition to highlighting implications for future research, we identify strategies for faculty and staff seeking to support community college transfer students and build access to graduate training. 

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3. What I Wish I Had Known Early in Graduate School but Didn’t

   https://doi.org/10.1609/aimag.v41i1.5291  

   Koenig, Sven (April 2020, AI Magazine)

   Begin with the end in mind!1 PhD students in artificial intelligence can start to prepare for their career after their PhD degree immediately when joining graduate school, and probably in many more ways than they think. To help them with that, I asked current PhD students and recent PhD computer-science graduates from the University of Southern California and my own PhD students to recount the important lessons they learned (perhaps too late) and added the advice of Nobel Prize and Turing Award winners and many other researchers (including my own reflections), to create this article. 

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4. Postdocs’ lab engagement predicts trajectories of PhD students’ skill development

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1912488116  

   Feldon, David F.; Litson, Kaylee; Jeong, Soojeong; Blaney, Jennifer M.; Kang, Jina; Miller, Candace; Griffin, Kimberly; Roksa, Josipa (October 2019, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   The doctoral advisor—typically the principal investigator (PI)—is often characterized as a singular or primary mentor who guides students using a cognitive apprenticeship model. Alternatively, the “cascading mentorship” model describes the members of laboratories or research groups receiving mentorship from more senior laboratory members and providing it to more junior members (i.e., PIs mentor postdocs, postdocs mentor senior graduate students, senior students mentor junior students, etc.). Here we show that PIs’ laboratory and mentoring activities do not significantly predict students’ skill development trajectories, but the engagement of postdocs and senior graduate students in laboratory interactions do. We found that the cascading mentorship model accounts best for doctoral student skill development in a longitudinal study of 336 PhD students in the United States. Specifically, when postdocs and senior doctoral students actively participate in laboratory discussions, junior PhD students are over 4 times as likely to have positive skill development trajectories. Thus, postdocs disproportionately enhance the doctoral training enterprise, despite typically having no formal mentorship role. These findings also illustrate both the importance and the feasibility of identifying evidence-based practices in graduate education. 

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5. Professorial intentions of engineering PhDs from historically excluded groups: The influence of graduate school experiences

   https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20607  

   Fleming, Gabriella_Coloyan; Cobb, Sydni_Alexa; Borrego, Maura (July 2024, Journal of Engineering Education)

   Abstract BackgroundIn addition to the benefits of a diverse faculty, many institutions are under pressure from students and administrators to increase the number of faculty from historically excluded backgrounds. Despite increases in the numbers of engineering PhD earners from these groups, the percentages of Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino tenure‐track faculty have not increased, and the percentage of women remains low. PurposeThe purpose of this study is to identify how experiences in graduate school encourage or deter PhD earners from historically excluded groups in pursuing an engineering academic career. MethodWe conducted 20 semi‐structured interviews with engineering PhD students and recent graduates, with half of participants interested and half disinterested in pursuing an academic career after graduation. ResultsThree key factors emerged as strongly influential on participants' desire to pursue an academic career: their relationship with their advisor, their perception of their advisor's work–life balance, and their perception of the culture of academia. Participants extrapolated their experiences in graduate school to their imagined lives as faculty. The results illuminate the reasons why engineering PhD earners from historically underrepresented groups remain in or leave the academic career pathway after graduate school. ConclusionsThe findings of this study have important implications for how graduate students' and postdoc's relationships with their advisors as well as perceptions of their advisors' work–life balances and the culture of academia affect future faculty. We make recommendations on what students, faculty, and administrators can do to create a more inclusive environment to encourage students from historically excluded groups to consider academic careers. 

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