TY - JOUR
T1 - The Quest for URM Doctoral Persistence
T2 - 2023 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition - The Harbor of Engineering: Education for 130 Years, ASEE 2023
AU - Cano-Morales, Martha Lucia
AU - Weinberg, Michael Corey
AU - Mejia, Eduardo Rodriguez
AU - Cruz, Juan M.
AU - Lee-Thomas, Gwen
AU - Matusovich, Holly M.
AU - Artiles, Mayra S.
AU - Rivera, Abimelec Mercado
AU - Adams, Stephanie G.
N1 - Funding Information:
In the 2018 report, Graduate STEM education for the 21st century, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine stresses the need to have representation of all segments of society in graduate schools and change the trend of exclusion in STEM fields [1]. In engineering some underrepresented minorities (URM), have significantly low representation in Ph.D. programs. This is the case for African Americans, who received only the 3.5% of doctorates in Engineering in 2015; Native American, 0.25%; Pacific Islands 0.021%, and Hispanic American, 6.19%. [1] To help URM students to overcome the challenges they face as minorities in their doctorate, we created the Rising Doctoral Institute (RDI), a project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The RDI consists of an intervention of one week, in which URM students receive guidance and information that helps them navigate the transition to the Ph.D. and provides them with a support network [2]. The goals of the RDI program are (1) to examine the effect of early interventions for doctoral students on the transition into the engineering doctorate, and (2) to develop sustainable models for institutions to implement on their campus to help URM students transition into the doctorate [2].
Funding Information:
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under grants No. 2029796, 2029784, 2029782, and 2029785. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Publisher Copyright:
© American Society for Engineering Education, 2023.
PY - 2023/6/25
Y1 - 2023/6/25
N2 - Studies have shown that the graduation rate for underrepresented minorities (URM) students enrolled in engineering doctorates is significantly lower than their peers. In response, we created the “Rising Doctoral Institute (RDI)”. This project aims to address issues that URM students encounter when transitioning into a Ph.D. in engineering and their decision to persist in the program. To suggest institutional policies that increase the likelihood of URM students to persist in their doctorate, we identify and analyze some factors in the academic system that reinforce or hinder the retention of URM students in doctoral education. Although the factors that influence persistence in URM students have been largely studied as direct causes of attrition or retention, there is a need for a system perspective that takes into account the complexity and dynamic interaction that exists between those factors. The academic system is a complex system that, by nature, is policy resistant. This means that a positive variation of a factor can incur unintended consequences that could lead to a negative variation in other factors and ultimately hinder the positive outcomes of that policy. In this work-in-progress article, we analyze the dynamics of the factors in the academic system that reinforce or hinder the retention of URM graduate students in engineering. The purpose is to build some of the causal loops that involve those factors, to improve the understanding of how the complex system works, and prevent unintended consequences of institutional policies. We used Causal Loop Diagrams (CLD) to model the feedback loops of the system based on initial hypotheses of causal relationships between the factors. We followed a process that started with establishing hypotheses from a previous literature review, then using a different set of articles we identified the factors related to the hypotheses and the causal links between them. Next, we did axial coding to group the concepts into smaller categories and established the causal relations between categories. With these categories and relations, we created the CLDs for each hypothesis. For the CLDs that have connections missing to close the loop, we went to find additional literature to close them. Finally, we analyzed the implications of each CLD. In this article, we analyze and describe three major CLDs found in literature. The first one was built around the factor of having a positive relationship with the supervisor. The second centered on the student's experience. The third focused on factors that relate to university initiatives.
AB - Studies have shown that the graduation rate for underrepresented minorities (URM) students enrolled in engineering doctorates is significantly lower than their peers. In response, we created the “Rising Doctoral Institute (RDI)”. This project aims to address issues that URM students encounter when transitioning into a Ph.D. in engineering and their decision to persist in the program. To suggest institutional policies that increase the likelihood of URM students to persist in their doctorate, we identify and analyze some factors in the academic system that reinforce or hinder the retention of URM students in doctoral education. Although the factors that influence persistence in URM students have been largely studied as direct causes of attrition or retention, there is a need for a system perspective that takes into account the complexity and dynamic interaction that exists between those factors. The academic system is a complex system that, by nature, is policy resistant. This means that a positive variation of a factor can incur unintended consequences that could lead to a negative variation in other factors and ultimately hinder the positive outcomes of that policy. In this work-in-progress article, we analyze the dynamics of the factors in the academic system that reinforce or hinder the retention of URM graduate students in engineering. The purpose is to build some of the causal loops that involve those factors, to improve the understanding of how the complex system works, and prevent unintended consequences of institutional policies. We used Causal Loop Diagrams (CLD) to model the feedback loops of the system based on initial hypotheses of causal relationships between the factors. We followed a process that started with establishing hypotheses from a previous literature review, then using a different set of articles we identified the factors related to the hypotheses and the causal links between them. Next, we did axial coding to group the concepts into smaller categories and established the causal relations between categories. With these categories and relations, we created the CLDs for each hypothesis. For the CLDs that have connections missing to close the loop, we went to find additional literature to close them. Finally, we analyzed the implications of each CLD. In this article, we analyze and describe three major CLDs found in literature. The first one was built around the factor of having a positive relationship with the supervisor. The second centered on the student's experience. The third focused on factors that relate to university initiatives.
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M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:85172089758
SN - 2153-5965
JO - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
JF - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
Y2 - 25 June 2023 through 28 June 2023
ER -