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Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine how student agency influences career decision-making for doctoral students in biological sciences. The authors address the following questions: How do biological science graduate students navigate career indecision? And how does agency relate to their experiences with career indecision? Design/methodology/approach The authors analyzed interview data collected from 84 PhD biology graduate students. Researchers used a grounded theory approach. After open codes were developed and data were coded, code reports were generated, which were used to determine themes. Findings More than half of the sample had not committed to a career path, and undecided students were bifurcated into two categories: Uncommitted and Uncertain. Uncommitted graduate students demonstrated agency in their approach and were focused on exploration and development. Uncertain students demonstrated less agency, were more fearful and perceived less control and clarity about their options and strategies to pursue career goals. Practical implications Findings suggest some forms of indecision can be productive and offer institutional leaders guidance for increasing the efficacy of career development and exploration programming. Originality/value Research on doctoral student career decision-making is often quantitative and rarely explores the role of agency. This qualitative study focuses on the relationship between student agency and career indecision, which is an understudied aspect of career development. 

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. 

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. 

This paper identifies the primary issues that have confounded efforts to increase the number and proportion of underrepresented groups within STEM faculty. Drawing on extant research, the paper establishes that despite increases in diversity and inclusion within other areas of academia, STEM fields continue to experience disproportional lags in diverse representation throughout the STEM pathway and especially within STEM academic careers. The paper argues that there are two primary foci that must both be addressed to achieve a diverse workforce: increases to the pool of credentialed candidates and a critical examination of the recruitment, hiring, and retention practices and policies. While this paper is focused within the context of higher education and the diversification of STEM faculty, its findings and argument are applicable for areas of industry beyond academic careers.