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The purpose of this paper is to examine the racial and ethnic aspects of the doctoral socialization to provide a meaningful insight into the belief systems and decision-making processes related to academic success and degree completion. This paper addresses a gap in literature focusing on the racial and ethnic aspects of the doctoral student experience as they relate to student agency.

This narrative research of four doctoral students uses a postmodern active interview method to foreground the role of a doctoral agency as manifested in the ways students make meaning of their experiences as members of the science, technology, engineering, agriculture and math academic community. A dialectical approach to the traditional socialization models provides the framework for understanding the meaning-making processes within a critical context of academia.

Findings present the intrinsic foundations for a doctoral agency and forces that shape key decision-making processes for doctoral students.

Implications for research and practice provide guidance for faculty, graduate school administrators and organizations interested in supporting degree completion for historically marginalized doctoral students.

This study examines doctoral socialization as a meaning-making process of racial/ethnic students in engineering and agricultural programs. Narrative research design provides depth into the individual experiences and the role of racial/ethnic histories in students’ socialization (meaning-making) processes in a predominantly White academic environment.

As part of the broader effort to diversify higher education in the USA, many science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) doctoral programs are deeply engaged in diversity work – an array of formal activities and practices meant to boost the representation of women and students of color. This paper aims to examine how underrepresented doctoral students in high-diversity STEM PhD programs contribute to diversity work in their programs.

A case study approach was used to understand the nature of diversity work in four STEM doctoral programs that have enrolled and graduated women and/or underrepresented students of color at rates significantly higher than their disciplines, despite being located in states with affirmative action bans. This study analyzes qualitative data from 24 semi-structured interviews and four focus groups with students from across the four departments.

Data reveal that underrepresented students are simultaneously positioned as representatives of progress and uncompensated consultants in their departments’ ongoing equity and diversity efforts. As a result, student contributions to diversity work are experienced as an ongoing process of emotional labor in which institutional ethos and/or feeling rules in the department shape how students manage their internal and external emotions.

Although diversity-related work is widespread and growing within colleges and universities, this study shows how student engagement in diversification efforts can lead to significant emotional burdens that go unnoticed and uncompensated. In highlighting the invisibility of emotional labor and the skew of its distribution toward minoritized groups, this research calls attention to how tacit feeling rules can undermine the ultimate goal of diversity initiatives within graduate departments and programs.

The purpose of this study, nested within a broader study about higher education leadership, was to generate knowledge about the ways in which doctoral education prepared people for leadership roles in postsecondary institutions within the USA. At colleges and universities, there is an interest in ensuring diverse leadership teams and welcoming campus environments. Yet, the research demonstrates challenges for and underrepresentation among higher education leaders. One point of intervention is doctoral programs in higher education and related fields, given the professional socialization, identity formation and knowledge acquisition that occurs through the doctoral journey.

By conducting interviews with women who hold doctorates in the field of higher education and who took on new leadership roles at postsecondary institutions in the USA during the global health pandemic, the authors identified specific areas for which doctoral-level training and experiences may be helpful in supporting leader development.

The authors identified specific areas for which doctoral-level training and experiences may be helpful in supporting leader development. Based on those findings, the authors offer initial propositions about how doctoral programs might support the development of equity-minded leaders in higher education, which should be tested and refined through further research, theory development and application to practice.

This paper contributes by providing a focus on the ways in which doctoral programs can equitably train and develop equity-minded leaders for a range of career goals including but not limited to academic appointments in higher education.

The purpose of this research study was to explore U.S. STEM faculty’s perceptions of culturally responsive mentoring underrepresented doctoral students in STEM programs. The research question that guided this study was “How do STEM doctoral faculty mentors engage in culturally responsive mentoring?

A case study research design was used and included findings from an embedded case drawn from a larger ongoing study. Six STEM faculty participants provided in-depth insights into the dynamic nature of the culturally responsive mentoring journey through semi-structured interviews that were analyzed using thematic analysis. The theoretical framework for this research study was grounded in the ideas posited by culturally responsive pedagogy.

The findings revealed three themes related to the mentoring journeys experienced by the faculty fellows: an academic journey, an intentional journey, and a subliminal journey.

The findings of this research provide significant contribution to the current literature on mentoring and point to the importance of continuous, structured research efforts to increase the quality of mentoring for URM students in doctoral STEM programs.

STEM faculty could benefit from participating in mentor training framed by culturally responsive pedagogy. Future research is needed to explore the mentor training needs of STEM faculty in other environments, including contexts outside the United States.

This study extends understanding of STEM faculty's knowledge, dispositions, and abilities of culturally responsive mentoring and emphasizes the need for ongoing professional development training in this area.

For several decades, human and financial resources have been the focus of academic institutions in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics fields of study because of low matriculation and graduation involving diverse student populations. However, there is a paucity of research about pathways to doctoral-level education and completion for these underrepresented populations. The purpose of this paper is to explore conceptually how STEM doctoral programs can implement a critical multiculturalist framework to recruit, increase persistence and completion to abate the attrition rate of women and students of color in doctoral programs.

Through a critical multiculturalist framework, issues of access and attainment central to the pipeline of traditionally underrepresented populations in to the STEM fields are addressed in this paper in an effort to support equity and inclusion at the doctoral level. Approaching this issue through critical multiculturalism takes the issue of access and attainment beyond sheer numbers by addressing the limited opportunity of women and students of color to see themselves in graduate faculty within STEM.

This paper reviews literature regarding the STEM pipeline’s “glass ceiling” that exists at the graduate level for students from marginalized communities, including gender and race. This paper proposes a multicultural doctoral persistence model.

Despite the efforts of many institutions of higher education to diversify the STEM fields, a “glass ceiling” remains at the doctoral level. There appears to be a pipeline for women and minorities from K-12 to the undergraduate level, but the doctoral level has been largely left out of the conversation.

Much of the extant research, practice and policy in engineering education has focused on the limited persistence, waning interest and lack of preparation among Black students to continue beyond the post-secondary engineering pipeline. However, this research suggests that many Black PhD students persist and succeed in engineering, fueled by various motivational strengths. To better understand the motivations of Black students in engineering doctoral programs, this study aims to explore the factors that influence their decision to enroll in either an engineering or a computing doctoral program.

This paper uses an intrinsic and extrinsic motivational framework to investigate the inspiration of 44 Black engineering doctoral students in PhD engineering programs in 11 engineering schools across the country.

Results show that the participants’ motivation to pursue a PhD in engineering comes from several distinct factors, including the following: an unyielding passion for their particular discipline, a sense of responsibility to serve marginalized peoples and society, a path toward autonomy, pre-PhD mentorship and research opportunities and family and prior work experience.

Based on this study’s findings, a reconceptualization of graduate engineering education that incorporates the importance of “being Black” and its relationships with motivating and, potentially, retaining Black science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students is also offered.

This paper seeks to expose particular constructs and behaviors surrounding Black students’ motivation to learn and achieve in engineering at the highest academic levels, offering a more nuanced perspective than currently is found in traditional engineering education literature.

Studies of inequality in higher education on both undergraduate and graduate levels have rarely examined experiences of Asians and Pacific Islanders (APIs). In this study, we focus on the experiences and outcomes of API students in doctoral education. More specifically, we examine socialization experiences and research productivity of three groups of students: domestic API, international API, and domestic white students. The results, based on a national cohort of PhD students in biology, reveal notable differences in experiences and outcomes of domestic and international API students. Although variation in socialization experiences explains differences in research productivity in the first year, that is not the case in the second year of doctoral study. In the second year, international API students have publication productivity comparable to their white peers, despite less favorable socialization experiences. Domestic API students, however, have lower research productivity than their white peers, even though they have comparable socialization experiences. Given the presumption of APIs’ success, especially in the STEM fields, findings for domestic API students are surprising and not aligned with the model minority stereotype. Contributions to research on API students, doctoral education, and socialization theory are discussed.

Louisiana State University (LSU)’s Office of Strategic Initiatives (OSI) is an award-winning office devoted to developing effective, educational approaches that incorporate guidance and exploration, increase students’ academic standing, and support measures to improve the institution’s diversity, predominantly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) departments. Through the incorporation of three main factors, Mentoring, Education, and Research, OSI has developed a holistic development model that offers students strategies to overcome those factors that affect their persistence in STEM. OSI houses several programs with a diverse population of students ranging from the high school to doctoral levels. Although varied in student population, these programs unite under the holistic development model to provide support and opportunities to students at each critical educational juncture. OSI’s holistic approach has successfully supported over 135 high school, 560 undergraduate, and 100 graduate students. Of the 560 undergraduate students served, 51% were underrepresented minorities and 55% were women. The undergraduate initiatives have garnered 445 bachelor’s degrees, with 395 degrees from STEM disciplines, and an impressive overall graduation rate ranging from 64% to 84%. Through all of the remarkable work performed in OSI, the greatest accomplishment has been the capacity to offer students from mixed backgrounds tools and strategies to thrive at any point in their academic career.

The growing demand for doctoral education and the role of the doctoral degree to advance nations socially, economically, and culturally forces countries and individual institutions to respond to concerns stemming from the doctoral process. Numerous initiatives to support doctoral students have been adopted with varying features across countries. The purpose of this paper is to examine doctoral student support programs in two countries: the USA and Turkey. These countries offer higher education systems at different stages of maturity and stability.

The data for this study came from a comparative case study analysis of doctoral student experiences in support programs at two research universities, one in the USA and one in Turkey. Ten American doctoral students and eight Turkish doctoral students were interviewed, for a total of 18 interviews. The study utilized the conceptual framework specified by the PhD Completion Project initiated by the US Council of Graduate Schools.

The two national systems featured in this study are at different points of their development. These developmental starting points influence the rationale and construction of a student support program, particularly one focused on advanced degrees, research activity, and knowledge production. The Turkish higher education system faces the challenge of building its infrastructure to be responsive to national needs in future decades, including producing qualified faculty as teachers and researchers. The American model of doctoral student support concentrates on increasing diversity within the academy. By focusing on first-generation students, students of color, and women in STEM disciplines, efforts are directed toward not just improving the quantity of graduates, but also the diversity of those graduates.

While doctoral student support programs are increasingly common in multiple national contexts, analyses of these programs are rare, and comparative analyses even more so. The emergence of new academic disciplines, the trend toward interdisciplinary research, and the prevalence of neo-liberal policies has made the doctoral experience increasingly complex. The data presented here reveal that while doctoral education is influenced by country-specific contexts, doctoral students from multiple countries share many of the same experiences.

The purpose of this study is to examine how intersecting oppressed identities shape the socialization experiences of Black women doctoral candidates in agricultural disciplines at historically white institutions. This paper addresses a gap in literature examining the experiences of Black women within the context of higher agricultural sciences education.

This study uses narrative inquiry to examine the experiences of five Black women doctoral candidates through a set of three interviews per participant.

Three themes regarding participants’ socialization experiences were identified. Themes are presented according to its site of socialization: lack of trust in advising relationships, departmental belonging and negative interactions with department faculty and isolation and exclusion at conferences.

This study adds to the small body of research on Black women in higher agricultural sciences education. Further, this study contributes to the larger body of socialization research and the minimal research on socialization for marginalized populations in higher agricultural sciences education.