Attention to doctoral education from scholars and policy makers has increased dramatically over the last two decades. Recent research on doctoral education has focused on the experiences of doctoral student and on issues related to financial aid, time to degree, completion rates, supervisor relations and socialization. The socialization framework has been used most frequently to understand the experiences of doctoral students, and this research continues to explore students’ experiences through the lens of socialization. A crucial component of this research is the use of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice to examine doctoral education, in general, and the socialization of doctoral students, in particular. The concepts of habitus, capital, field and practice were used to explore doctoral education as constitutive of particular processes and expectations that underscore specific notions of success. In doing so, the socialization of doctoral students was examined through these tools to determine the extent to which different socialization mechanisms were experienced differently by students. Finally, an investigation into the histories, experiences and relationships of these students prior to enrolment in doctoral study suggested that particular elements of students’ pasts were highlighted as significant factors to their understanding of the expectations of doctoral study and ability to demonstrate competence with academic tasks, both of which impacted their socialization during doctoral education. This research revealed that doctoral education operated with particular rules and expectations that promote specific notions of success. These rules, expectations and parameters of success were deeply tied to demonstrations of task competence through the traditional academic tripartite. Considerable discussion highlighted operationalizations of “research” that included securing external, competitive scholarships, publishing in academic, peer-reviewed venues and presenting at disciplinary academic conferences. Students who were able to achieve these experiences were deemed to be more “successful” during doctoral study. Importantly, there was a tendency of “reinforcing advantage” to the experiences of “successful” doctoral students to the extent that those students who demonstrated acumen with particular aspects of academic work were offered and encouraged to take on more experiences and responsibilities that enriched their doctoral education.

Attention to doctoral education from scholars and policy makers has increased dramatically over the last two decades. Recent research on doctoral education has focused on the experiences of doctoral student and on issues related to financial aid, time to degree, completion rates, supervisor relations and socialization. The socialization framework has been used most frequently to understand the experiences of doctoral students, and this research continues to explore students’ experiences through the lens of socialization. A crucial component of this research is the use of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice to examine doctoral education, in general, and the socialization of doctoral students, in particular. The concepts of habitus, capital, field and practice were used to explore doctoral education as constitutive of particular processes and expectations that underscore specific notions of success. In doing so, the socialization of doctoral students was examined through these tools to determine the extent to which different socialization mechanisms were experienced differently by students. Finally, an investigation into the histories, experiences and relationships of these students prior to enrolment in doctoral study suggested that particular elements of students’ pasts were highlighted as significant factors to their understanding of the expectations of doctoral study and ability to demonstrate competence with academic tasks, both of which impacted their socialization during doctoral education. This research revealed that doctoral education operated with particular rules and expectations that promote specific notions of success. These rules, expectations and parameters of success were deeply tied to demonstrations of task competence through the traditional academic tripartite. Considerable discussion highlighted operationalizations of “research” that included securing external, competitive scholarships, publishing in academic, peer-reviewed venues and presenting at disciplinary academic conferences. Students who were able to achieve these experiences were deemed to be more “successful” during doctoral study. Importantly, there was a tendency of “reinforcing advantage” to the experiences of “successful” doctoral students to the extent that those students who demonstrated acumen with particular aspects of academic work were offered and encouraged to take on more experiences and responsibilities that enriched their doctoral education.

Thesis advisor: Audrey A. Friedman / Much of the research on doctoral students’ experiences is reported quantitatively from national studies across disciplines or in the form of abstractions about ways in which institutions might improve graduate education (e.g., Golde & Dore, 2001; Nerad, 2004). Qualitative, empirical research exploring the reasons for doctoral graduates’ career choices is limited, especially for doctoral students in the field of education. Given that ~ 50% of doctoral graduates pursue careers outside of academia, it might be beneficial for institutions of higher education to prepare their doctoral students for the careers they ultimately choose. After teaching high school English for seven years, I decided to pursue a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction because I thought I might want to become a teacher educator. My experience in the doctoral program challenged my expectations, and after completing coursework, I returned to the high school classroom. This dissertation sought to understand the experiences of doctoral students who earned PhDs in Curriculum and Instruction and chose to return to or remain in K-12 settings as opposed to pursuing careers in academia. I applied narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) and autoethnography (Denzin, 2014) as methodologies to present an exploratory, multiple-case study (Yin, 2014) of six graduates (and one almost-graduate) from a Curriculum and Instruction doctoral program. Written narratives, individual interviews, documents, and artifacts provided the data for this study. Findings reveal the factors that influence students’ experiences in the doctoral program, as well as their ultimate career choices, which include: a commitment to and passion for public education, the financial implications of pursuing a career in academia compared to one in K-12 schools, the specific requirements of the program (e.g., coursework, assistantship, and dissertation), the misconceptions upon entering the program, and the ability to share new knowledge within K-12 schools. Participants overwhelmingly agreed that the knowledge and skills they developed during the program impacted their practice in positive and powerful ways. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

The literature identifies multiple factors pertinent to learner characteristics and learning experiences that may promote doctoral education outcomes, and yet little quantitative research has examined relationships between those factors deemed important in the effectiveness of doctoral education. This study sought to examine predictive relationships among doctoral students’ learner characteristics, their involvement in mentorship and intellectual community, and doctoral education outcomes. Using Astin’s theory of involvement and the literature on signature pedagogies in doctoral education as conceptual guides, a survey instrument was constructed for the purpose of measuring variables identified as relevant to the effective formation of scholars. Central to the conceptualization of this study was academic involvement as represented by mentorship and intellectual community. The instrument was validated in a two-stage pilot testing process and administered to doctoral candidates at three public Texas higher education institutions. Of the 217 participants, the majority were female, White (Non-Hispanic), US citizens, and were pursuing education doctorates. Data were analyzed using multivariate statistical analyses. Reliability and validity estimates indicated psychometric integrity of the 20 observed variables measured to represent the constructs of mentorship and intellectual community. Results indicated that doctoral students’ learner characteristics were not notably predictive of doctoral students’ degree of involvement in mentorship and intellectual community (p < .05, R2 = .23). Doctoral students’ degree of academic involvement was strongly predictive of outcomes (p < .001, R2 = .58), particularly student satisfaction with the doctoral education experience and self-efficacy in conducting various forms of scholarly work. Of this effect, more tangible outcomes such as scholarly productivity and degree progress were not meaningfully related to academic involvement. Regardless of the frequency of academic involvement, students perceived faculty mentorship and intellectual community as very important. The predictive value and perceived importance of faculty mentorship and intellectual community highlight the critical role faculty and peer support plays in the doctoral learning experience, and imply that such teaching and learning practices should be promoted in doctoral education. Considering that satisfaction and self-efficacy tend to be related to other educational outcomes, those concerned with the overall quality of doctoral education should focus increased attention on building collegial, effective, productive relationships among and within program communities.

Thesis advisor: Karen Arnold / Students in doctoral education view mentoring as the most important aspect of their educational experience (Golde et al., 2005). Mentoring can affect student retention and dissertation completion (Cronan-Hilllix et al., 1986) and is typically received from the student's advisor. However, many Black and Latinx doctoral students do not receive the critical feedback they need from faculty to develop their academic skills (Williams, 2018). Given reported problematic faculty interactions within the traditional mentoring model (Johnson-Bailey et al., 2008), peers offer an alternative source of support. Few empirical studies examine the effects of peer mentoring for doctoral students of color. This qualitative study examines how six Latinx and Black doctoral students engage in peer mentoring and how they perceive its effects on their doctoral experience. The maximum variation sample includes students in five disciplines who were enrolled in one of three research universities in the Northeast. Critical race theory (Bell, 1992; Crenshaw et al., 1995) was employed to frame institutions of higher education as sites of deeply ingrained racism that inform how Black and Latinx doctoral students receive support from formal institutional sources (e.g., faculty, institutional offices). During semi-structured interviews, students discussed how they drew on their own community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) to create networks of support with peers, and the ways that peers provided them with much-needed guidance. Findings reveal how peers played a profoundly important role in helping students overcome significant challenges in their program while providing key information. Students often received multiple, simultaneous forms of support from a single peer, including social/emotional, academic, and financial-related. Peers provided different forms of navigational capital (Yosso, 2005) to students, pairing them with tools and resources needed to maneuver through complex systems that were not designed for their success. Data also illuminated how students received resistant capital (Yosso, 2005) in order to manage numerous challenges. Findings point to the benefits of facilitating peer mentoring for Latinx and Black doctoral students, along with significant improvements in institutional support services and advising structures. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

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Doctoral education in the U.S. is essential to cultivating professionals, scientists, and researchers capable of advancing and contributing to national goals. However, the engineering field warrants diversification to respond to global, social, and demographic demands. It is necessary to support students from historically marginalized backgrounds by acknowledging their unique experiences and encouraging them to activate their agency while faculty and institutional leaders work toward dismantling systemic barriers. Such practices may aid historically marginalized students in completing their degrees which will contribute to reduced attrition rates, time to degree, and degree completion. Over the past 10 years, Blacks and African Americans, Hispanic and Latinx people, and Native Americans and Indigenous people have demonstrated steady growth in doctoral education in engineering, despite several challenges and systemic barriers encountered during their doctoral journey. Even though they are growing in the field, attrition rates, time to degree, and degree completion remain an issue. Higher education researchers, workforce stakeholders, and educational organizations have been focusing on diversifying the STEM fields. Still, little attention has focused on the psychosocial elements that influence historically marginalized doctoral students' academic journeys. For example, research shows historically marginalized doctoral students encounter various challenges in doctoral education such as isolation, tokenism, and microaggression among others. To this end, it is essential to understand historically marginalized doctoral students' motivation and experiences in doctoral engineering education to identify strategies for mitigating these challenges as well as increase degree completion and decrease the time to degree. Guided by the situated expectancy-value theory and the graduate socialization framework, this dissertation consists of two manuscripts. The first manuscript is a qualitative holistic single case study that explores Latinx students' motivations to pursue a doctoral degree in engineering by investigating the following question: What values motivate Latinx students to pursue a doctoral degree in engineering? The second manuscript applies transcendental phenomenology to explore historically marginalized engineering doctoral students' socialization experiences by considering the following question: How do historically marginalized doctoral engineering students perceive their socialization experiences? The data sources for both manuscripts consist of interviews and surveys from participants in a research boot camp conducted between 2017-2021 from a larger national science foundation (NSF) funded project named the Dissertation Institute (DI). These studies are significant because they will provide implications for students who identify as members of these populations, research, practice, and policy concerning historically marginalized doctoral students' socialization experiences in engineering. Findings from the first study revealed that Latinx student motivation to pursue and persist in engineering doctoral degrees contained different subjective task values from SEVT and was influenced by educational and research experiences, role model interactions, and socio-cultural values. The second manuscript unearthed that students' socialization occurs in progressive, sequential, and connected stages. Each stage indicates students' development, even with the possible recurrence of previous stages depending on the challenges tied to systemic issues. Both manuscripts uncovered motivation and socialization vary from person to person contemplating various dimensions, and they are interconnected and influence students' journeys. In addition, the engineering context impacts both elements with respect to funding sources, research emphasis, and the persistent White male normative culture. / Doctor of Philosophy / Black and African Americans, Hispanic and Latinx, and Native Americans and Indigenous people have made significant contributions to doctoral education and the engineering field. Still, their representation in these contexts does not align with social, cultural, and political realities. Often these populations leave their doctoral programs or take longer to complete their degrees. Substantial academic research has investigated the challenges in doctoral education experienced by these populations. Still, little research focuses on their motivation to pursue or persist in these fields despite their lack of representation and socialization experiences. This dissertation focused on those elements and encompassed two studies in the engineering doctoral context that sought to answer the following questions: 1) What values motivate Latinx students to pursue a doctoral degree in engineering? 2) How do historically marginalized doctoral engineering students perceive their socialization experiences? The results from the first study showed Latinx students' motivation to pursue a doctoral degree in engineering matched their sense of self, and the attainment value represents it, as they considered completing an engineering Ph.D. will help accomplish their future academic and professional goals. Also, the importance of family and community drives their desire to earn a doctoral degree and retribute and help others in the future by being a role model. The second study evidenced that students' socialization is represented by progressive, sequential, and connected stages. The student's advancement in these stages and the ways they navigate various challenges indicated students' development. Combined, both studies demonstrated motivation and socialization vary from person to person, contemplating multiple dimensions, and are interconnected and influence students' journeys.

Research on doctoral student attrition has shown that one of the main reasons for which students do not persist in the Ph.D. is because of a poor relationship with their doctoral advisor. The importance of the advising relationship is especially true in science, math, and engineering degrees because of the science model of advising as the student is the advisor's employee, close collaborator, and apprentice. While much attention has been given to understanding the dynamics of the advising relationship, little attention has been given to on how these relationships commence or the context in which they begin. This study ultimately contributes to understanding the context of the inception of advisor- advisee relationships and how it ultimately relates to both faculty and doctoral student satisfaction. The following overarching research questions guide this dissertation: What are the processes for doctoral students to find advisors in engineering, science, and math? How is this process experienced by faculty and students? To address these questions, I conducted three studies. Through these studies, this dissertation: 1) Identified and described the types of advisor-advisee selection processes that exist in engineering, science, and math and examined trends and patterns across disciplines; 2) compared how two Chemical Engineering programs practice the advisor selection process and examined how faculty and graduate program directors negotiate agency in the process and 3) explored how students experience satisfaction of their basic needs in the advisor selection process of one Chemical Engineering program and examined which student attributes influence this satisfaction of needs. The results showed that there are multiple ways through which a student can find an advisor in science, math, and engineering doctoral program, but these vary widely by both discipline and field of study. The results also showed both students and faculty value the ability to select whom they will work with. However, both groups may also need support in making this decision regarding with whom they will work. Overall, the results of this dissertation highlight the importance of developing practices that balance an individual's need for support and autonomy to improve their satisfaction. / Doctor of Philosophy / Studies have shown that roughly half of the doctoral students do not complete the doctorate degree. One of the main reasons for this departure is students having a poor relationship with the doctoral advisor. This relationship is particularly important for science, math, and engineering doctorates as in these fields of study the advisor and student work closely together. Much research has looked at how the relationship can be improved; however, little work has addressed how these relationships begin and the environment in which they start. This dissertation encompasses three studies that address the following research questions: What are the processes for doctoral students to find advisors in engineering, science, and math? How do faculty and students experience this process? Through these studies, this dissertation: 1) Described the ways through which doctoral programs help students find advisors in engineering, science, and math and how these ways varied by disciplines and fields of study; 2) compared how two Chemical Engineering programs help students find advisors; 3) explored how students experienced finding an advisor of one Chemical Engineering program. The results showed that there are multiple ways through which a student can find an advisor, but these vary widely by both discipline and field of study. The results also showed both students and faculty value the ability to choose whom they will work with. However, they may also need support in making this decision. Overall, the results of this dissertation highlight the importance of developing practices that balance an individual’s need for support and free will to improve their satisfaction.

This study was designed to explore the impact of interdisciplinary research on the likelihood of a doctoral student obtaining a faculty job upon degree completion. Additionally, this study examined the important individual and institutional components of socialization that contribute to differences in career outcomes. A socialization framework likely substantiates the extent to which doctoral training environments are consequential to careers. Results were obtained from a sample of 28,928 doctoral students who participated in the 2021 Survey of Earned Doctorates. Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling was used because it measures the effects of both student characteristics and institutional factors. The findings from this analysis suggest student demographics are an important predictor, but the significance of those characteristics' changes when doctoral field of study is considered. Additionally, there are institutional characteristics that impact the likelihood of obtaining a faculty job related to the proportion of various student backgrounds, faculty backgrounds, and broad field of study, and the prestige of the institution. The independent variable of interest, interdisciplinary dissertation, was not statistically significant at the student level, but the proportion of doctoral students completing an interdisciplinary dissertation at the institution level was statistically significant and negatively associated with obtaining a faculty position adjusting for other institutional factors. These findings show the importance of applying hierarchical models to research questions related to career outcomes for doctoral students. Without a hierarchical model, this important differential finding across levels would have been hidden. / Doctor of Philosophy / There is currently a surplus in doctoral degree production compared to a shrinking number of faculty jobs in academia. Interdisciplinary research experiences in doctoral education are becoming more popular and it is important to determine how participation in these programs influences a student's career prospects upon receiving their degree. This study was designed to explore the impact of completing an interdisciplinary dissertation on the likelihood of obtaining a faculty job upon degree completion. A model was used which considers characteristics of individual students as well as characteristics of the institutions they attend. Findings of the study show that for a student, completing an interdisciplinary dissertation does not have a statistically significant influence on their likelihood of obtaining a faculty job. However, the proportion of students completing an interdisciplinary dissertation at a particular institution has a statistically significant negative association on the likelihood of obtaining a faculty job. Additionally, student demographics were only significant until the broad field of study was considered in the model. Beyond student characteristics, there are institutional characteristics that impact the likelihood of obtaining a faculty job and these are related to the representation of various student backgrounds, faculty backgrounds, institution prestige, and the proportion of doctoral students in each broad field. These findings show the importance of considering both student and institutional characteristics.

Utilizing social support as the theoretical foundation for this research, the study proposes and tests the Mentoring Relational Process Model (MRPM). The influence of support sought, relational maintenance strategies, and support obtained on the critical graduate outcomes of relational satisfaction, research self-efficacy, perceived time-todegree, and relational quality is examined. Data collected from 310 doctoral students through an online survey is used to test the MRPM. Over 50% of the variance in relational satisfaction and relational quality, respectively, is predicted by the MRPM. Research selfefficacy and perceived time-to-degree were not well-predicted by the current data.