Seminar Series | Transforming the Advising Experience: Advisors and Advisees Experiences in Doctoral Engineering Programs

Doctoral attrition has been reported across multiple studies to be roughly 50%. Within engineering, disparities have been found in such rates for minoritized students as they finish the doctorate at even lesser rates than their majority counterparts. Research on doctoral student attrition has shown that one of the main reasons for which students leave Ph.D. programs is a poor relationship with their doctoral advisor. While much work has examined perspectives within the doctoral advising relationship, few studies have reported on this relationship’s formation and the initial factors that impact the relationship with a specific lens on minoritized students. This seminar will present a sampling of findings from several research studies focusing on the doctoral advising relationship. I will first describe how different STEM programs practice the advisor selection and students’ perspectives of such process in one engineering program. I will also present my most recent research that studies minoritized students’ transition into the engineering doctorate. The seminar will conclude with research-based strategies for both students and faculty on managing the advising relationship at all stages of the doctoral process.