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Doctoral students from underrepresented groups in engineering tend to complete their degrees at lower rates than their White and International peers. Research indicates that early support in doctoral programs, rather than later remedial efforts, can lead to long-term success. To that effect, we designed the Rising Doctoral Institute (RDI), an early information intervention for minoritized doctoral students. In this work in progress, we specifically explore how this intervention supports doctoral student agency throughout the first year of the doctoral experience We address the following questions: 1) How can agency be encouraged/promoted among minority students in the first year of the engineering PhD? Employing a longitudinal qualitative design, we conducted monthly interviews with six participants throughout their first year of doctoral study in engineering programs. We ground our work in Klemenčič’s Student Agency Model, focused on experiences affecting their persistence, to help uncover different aspects of agency that can manifest throughout this period of time. Preliminary results reveal that students cultivate agency through self-regulation, self-direction, self-determination, and self-efficacy, evident in their planning, motivation, and community engagement. Future work will focus on uncovering the specific mechanisms through which agency is enhanced. By linking positive first-year experiences to agency development, this research can guide interventions and tools for engineering departments to support student persistence. 

Enteroendocrine cells (EECs) are rare sensory cells in the intestinal epithelium that coordinate digestive physiology by secreting a diverse repertoire of peptide hormones. These hormones are the main effectors of EEC function, and their characterization requires direct observation by mass spectrometry due to the specialized protein cleavage and posttranslational modifications that yield their mature forms. Based on the distinct subset of hormones they predominantly secrete, EECs can be categorized into subtypes. How each EEC subtype is specified, however, remains poorly understood. Here, we describe EEC subtype differentiation and hormone production in the zebrafish. Using single-cell RNA sequencing data, we identified EEC progenitors and six EEC subtypes in zebrafish and revealed that their expression profiles are consistent across larval and adult stages. Mass spectrometry analysis of isolated zebrafish EECs identified highly processed peptides derived from 19 of 23 hormone-coding genes expressed by EECs, including a previously undescribed zebrafishsecretinortholog. We assembled reporters for zebrafish EEC subtypes to test the lineage relationships between EEC subtypes and the EEC progenitor population, which expressesneurogenin 3 (neurog3). Despite its essential role in mammalian EEC differentiation, we found that selective cytotoxic ablation ofneurog3+ cells in zebrafish only reduced a subset of EEC subtypes and loss of theneurog3gene had no impact on EEC numbers. Finally, we discovered that selective ablation ofghrelin+ EECs reduced a different subset of EEC subtypes, together suggesting thatneurog3+ andghrelin+ cells serve as distinct precursors for separate EEC subtypes. We anticipate these observations and resources will facilitate future studies in the zebrafish to discern the developmental biology, physiology, and endocrinology of EEC subtypes.