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IntroductionSeveral factors shape doctoral students’ decisions to leave their programs before completion. Among these, the quality of the advising plays a critical role. Yet, there remains limited understanding of how advisor relationships influence consequential decisions, such as early departure and lab change considerations in doctoral engineering students. This paper investigates the influence of advisor relationships on early departures and lab change considerations in doctoral engineering students. MethodsEngineering doctoral students from 26 top-ranked universities in the United States and 17 doctoral engineering disciplines responded to an online survey on departure considerations, advisor relationships, and lab change actions. In our sample (n = 269), fewer women (n = 108) participated compared to men (n = 121), with gender non-conforming individuals comprising a smaller proportion (n = 12), and 28 participants not self-identifying a gender. Linear regression was used to measure the association between advisor relationships and departure considerations, both with and without a master’s degree. Mediation tests were performed to assess the mediating effect of student’s ability to assess their progress to degree (progress assessment) on this relationship. ResultsOur results indicate that advisor relationships explained 12% of the variance in departure without a degree (R² = 0.12,F(1, 267) = 36.85,p < 0.001) and with a master’s degree (R² = 0.12,F(1, 267) = 35.66,p < 0.001). Progress assessment was statistically associated as a partial mediator of this relationship, with significant indirect effects (β = −0.05,p < 0.05) for departure with or without a master. DiscussionLow advisor relationship was associated with self-reported engagement in preparatory steps for early departure and research lab change considerations among doctoral engineering students. Conversely, negative advisor relationships are associated with increased self-reported engagement in steps leading to lab changes or departure considerations. 

Engineering requires new solutions to improve undergraduate performance outcomes, including course grades and continued enrollment in engineering pathways. Belonging and engineering role identity have long been associated with successful outcomes in engineering, including academic success, retention, and well‐being. We measure the relationships between belonging and role identity at the beginning of a first‐year engineering course with course grade and continued enrollment in engineering courses. We test the effect of an ecological belonging intervention on student belonging, course grade, and persistence.Students reported their sense of belonging in engineering, cross‐racial experiences, engineering performance/competence, interest in engineering, and engineering recognition before and after an in‐class intervention to improve classroom belonging ecology. Through a series of longitudinal multigroup path analyses, a form of structural equation modeling, we tested the predictive relationships of the measured constructs with engineering identity and investigated differences in these relationships by student gender and race/ethnicity. The proposed model predicts course grades and continued enrollment, providing insight into the potential for interventions to support first‐year engineering students. Group analysis results demonstrate the difference in the function of these psychosocial measures for women and Black, Latino/a/x, and Indigenous (BLI) students, providing insights into the potential importance of sociocultural interventions within engineering classrooms to improve the engineering climate, engagement, and retention of students. ImplicationsThe results highlight the need for more specific, nuanced theoretical investigations of how marginalized students experience the engineering environment and develop social belonging and engineering role identity. 

Background The demand for engineers in the workforce continues to rise, which requires increased retention and degree completion at the undergraduate level. Engineering educators need to better understand opportunities to retain students in engineering majors. A strong sense of belonging in engineering represents one important contributor to persistence. However, research has not investigated how academic help-seeking behaviors relate to belonging and downstream outcomes, such as persistence in engineering. Interventions to support and develop belonging show promise in increasing student retention, with particularly positive influences on women, Black, Latino/a/x, and indigenous students. As part of a larger research project, a quasi-experimental intervention to develop a classroom ecology of belonging was conducted at a large Midwestern university in a required first-year, second semester engineering programming course. The 45-min intervention presented students with stories from past students and peers to normalize academic challenges within the ecology of the classroom as typical and surmountable with perseverance, time, and effort. Results With treatment (n = 737) and control (n = 689) participant responses, we investigated how the intervention condition affected students’ comfort with seeking academic help and feeling safe being wrong in class as influences on belonging. Using path analysis, a form of structural equation modeling, we measured the influence of these attitudinal variables on belonging and the influence of belonging beyond a student’s grade point average on enrollment as an engineering major the following fall. The path analysis supports the importance of academic help-seeking and feeling safe to be wrong for belonging, as well as the importance of belonging on continued enrollment. A group path analysis compared the treatment and control groups and demonstrated the positive impact of the intervention on enrollment for the treatment participants. Conclusions The analyses demonstrate the importance of academic help-seeking in students’ sense of belonging in the classroom with implications for identifying effective tools to improve students’ sense of belonging through supporting help-seeking behaviors 

Abstract BackgroundPostdoctoral training holds an increasingly important place in preparation for leading academic and research positions. While little empirical research has described postdoctoral training beyond the sciences, across all fields, “misaligned expectations” are often touted as a key source of postdoctoral strife. Purpose/HypothesisThis article describes mentorship competency beliefs within engineering and computer science fields, which increasingly engage in postdoctoral training. Design/MethodAn embedded mixed‐methods design was used to quantitatively identify mentorship profiles from survey data using latent profile analysis (LPA) from a sample ofn = 118 postdoctoral scholars andn = 165 postdoctoral supervisors. Qualitative thematic analysis of interviews withn = 29 postdoctoral scholars andn = 20 postdoctoral supervisors was used to identify meaning in the differences between quantitative profiles. The combination of LPA with thematic analysis enabled the triangulation of distinct postdoctoral mentorship profile definitions. ResultsLPA identified six postdoctoral fellow profiles and four supervisor profiles, which became clearly definable through thematic analysis. Postdoc profiles included Technical Manager, Autonomy Focused Advisor, Stretched Mentor, Well‐Rounded Mentor, Exemplar Mentor, and Leader‐Mentor, while supervisor profiles included Autonomous Mentor, Reflective Mentor, Research Lab Mentor, and Confident Leader‐Mentor. Some of these are aligned, but several are not, giving insight into the phenomenon of “misaligned expectations” in postdoctoral literature. ConclusionsThe mentorship profiles illustrate the misalignment in expectations, which leads to negative mentorship experiences for many postdoctoral scholars.