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1. Surviving or flourishing: how relationships with principal investigators influence science graduate students’ wellness

   https://doi.org/10.1108/SGPE-12-2021-0085  

   Griffin, Kimberly A.; Stone, Joakina; Dissassa, Di-Tu; Hall, Terra Nicole; Hixson, Ashley (October 2022, Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education)

   Purpose This study aims to focus on the experiences of biomedical science students nearing the end of their doctoral programs and the factors that influence their well-being. In addition to identifying general challenges, the study aims to expand understanding of how interactions with principal investigators (PIs) can influence students’ well-being and engagement in wellness practices. Design/methodology/approach This qualitative study presents an analysis of interview data collected from 90 trainees five years after beginning their graduate programs. All were participants in a larger mixed-methods, longitudinal study. Emergent themes and a codebook were established after reviewing interview transcripts and completing memos. Codes were applied to data, and reports were generated to confirm and challenge early interpretations. Findings Participants described four key factors that influenced their well-being: perceived work/life balance; managing progress on research; program completion and job search; and overall faculty relationships. While relationships with PIs could be a source of stress, participants more often described how both interactions with, and observations of their PIs could amplify or mitigate their ability to manage other stressors and overall sense of well-being. Originality/value While researchers in the USA have increasingly considered the factors impacting graduate student mental health, there has been less of an emphasis on wellness and well-being. Furthermore, there has been less attention to how PIs contribute, in positive and negative ways, to these outcomes. This study offers insight into well-being at a specific timepoint, considering dynamics unique to wellness and well-being in the later stages of doctoral training. 

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2. PhD Student Funding Patterns: Placing Biomedical, Biological, and Biosystems Engineering in the Context of Engineering Sub-disciplines, Biological Sciences, and Other STEM Disciplines

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s43683-024-00142-w  

   Knight, David B; Grote, Dustin M; Kinoshita, Timothy J; Borrego, Maura (July 2024, Biomedical Engineering Education)

   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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3. Board 405: The Stressors for Doctoral Students Questionnaire (SDSQ): Year 3 of an RFE Project on Understanding graduate Engineering Student Well-Being and Retention

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--46993  

   Cromley, Jennifer; Jensen, Karin; Mirabelli, Joseph (June 2024, ASEE Conferences)

   It is well-known that a significant population of doctoral students drop out of their graduate programs and face or develop significant mental health distress. Stress plays a role in exacerbating mental health distress in both engineering PhD programs and more broadly for university students in general. While rates of dropout for engineering students may not differ strongly from other disciplines, engineering students have been suggested to be less likely to seek help from university services for well-being concerns. In the first year of our three‐year NSF RFE project, we interviewed doctoral engineering students to identify major stressors present in the doctoral engineering experience at the present study’s focal institution. In the second year of our project, we had developed the Stressors for Doctoral Students Questionnaire - Engineering (SDSQ-E), a novel survey which measures the frequency and severity of these top sources of stress for doctoral engineering students. The SDSQ-E was designed using the results of first year interviews and a review of the literature on stress for doctoral engineering students. In year three, we completed analysis of the year 3 data and conducted further testing of the SDSQ-E. We also developed a discipline-general form of the survey, called the SDSQ-G. In October-December 2023, we administered these surveys to engineering PhD students as a subset of a large sample of graduate students at two institutions. Further, we tested the potential for the SDSQ-E to predict factors such as anxiety, depression, or intention to persist in doctoral programs. We broadly summarize these survey distributions including tests of the SDSQ-E for validity, fairness, and reliability. 

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4. BOARD # 411: NSF RFE Project Update: An exploration of how faculty advising influences doctoral student psychological safety and the impact on work-related outcomes

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--55788  

   Bobbett, Dorian; Martini, Larkin; Jensen, Karin; Sanders, Jeanne; Huerta, Mark (June 2025, ASEE Conferences)

   Faculty advisors play an integral role in the experiences of graduate students. Advisors serve in many different capacities for doctoral students: teachers, career guides, research mentors, and more. However, especially in engineering disciplines, faculty advisors often receive little to no training on how to serve as effective mentors. The training that faculty may receive is oftentimes lacking in how to provide psychosocial support, which is an important part of developing psychological safety in a team. A psychologically safe environment is one where an individual feels safe to be themselves and take risks without fear of negative consequences. In graduate engineering education, psychologically safe research environments enable students to be creative and innovative, which is a necessary part of the research process. The impact that psychological safety has on graduate students’ work outcomes and mental health and well-being needs to be more deeply explored to best support students throughout their degree programs and beyond. Psychological safety in a graduate student-advisor relationship can have positive or negative effects on student mental health and well-being as well as learning outcomes. We posit that faculty advisors serve as a resource to students and in turn influence psychological safety in student research environments, which impacts student outcomes. This paper is an update on an NSF RFE project started in 2023 that leverages mixed methods to combine a survey of graduate engineering students and two sets of interviews. We use Conservation of Resources theory to examine psychological safety in relationships between doctoral engineering students and their research advisor(s). We have completed data collection and begun analysis of the survey responses and the first set of interviews. The survey was completed by 469 doctoral engineering students across two R1 institutions. Results indicated that psychological safety was a mediator between mentoring skills and student mental health and well-being and work outcomes. Twenty-eight survey participants were invited to participate in explanatory interviews. Nineteen participants completed an explanatory interview during which they provided insights and additional context into answers they had provided on the survey. Participants were selected to stratify demographics and offer a broad range of advisor experiences. Interviewers provided participants with their responses to survey items and asked them why they selected the answer they did or for any examples of times when their survey response was representative or not of their overall advising relationship. Explanatory interview findings emphasized the variability of student experiences with advisor mentorship and related work outcomes. Additional narrative interviews are currently being conducted with participants who had previously completed the survey. These narrative interviews are designed to capture specific events and stories from students about critical moments in their relationships with their advisors and how advisor actions (or inaction) in these critical moments impacted their psychological safety and work outcomes, and how these experiences changed over time. We intend to interview 10-15 participants from the larger study in Fall 2024. Collectively, these results will inform training for faculty advising graduate students to create psychologically safe environments where students will thrive. 

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5. Characterizing Doctoral Engineering Student Socialization: Narratives of Mental Health, Decisions to Persist, and Consideration of Career Trajectories

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE43999.2019.9028438  

   Hocker, E.; Zerbe, E.; Berdanier, C.G.P. (October 2019, 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. 

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