TY - JOUR
T1 - Examining pathways into graduate school through stewardship theory
AU - Shanachilubwa, Kanembe
AU - Berdanier, Catherine G.P.
N1 - Funding Information:
The purpose of this research paper is to understand the trajectories of early-career graduate students and senior-level undergraduate students as they consider graduate school. To this end, we qualitatively examined a corpus of N=50 personal statements, taken from winners of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program in one award cycle, to understand the trajectories that researchers take going into graduate school. Current graduate engineering enrollment numbers are declining with engineering doctoral attrition rates estimated to be about 24% and 36% for males and females, respectively. Students from traditionally underrepresented minority groups record doctoral attrition rates higher than 50%. This study employs the lens of Stewardship Theory, a theory commonly used to characterize the practices and activities of experts and PhD holders in generating, transforming, and conserving knowledge. Applied to our study, Stewardship Theory illuminates how particular undergraduate experiences, such as research experiences, teaching assistantships, tutoring, or outreach experiences, form the beginnings of an academic identity as a “steward of the discipline,” and prepare students for graduate school. Analysis of these fellowship awardees will help us identify and categorize experiences that encourage and prepare students to pursue graduate level studies, not that every student should or wants to pursue graduate school, but to help students begin to form academic identities Our findings characterize the experiences that undergraduates and early-career graduate students have through this and use qualitative data to show how these experiences prepared students to envision their role as graduate students. As a result of these findings, the engineering education research and practice communities can better understand how students conceptualize graduate school, their career goals, and research-intensive careers to inform how these experiences are conducted. Our findings also hold implications for scholars studying the formation of the future professoriate, as the academic “pipeline” begins with students like the ones from which we collected data in this study.
Funding Information:
In the present work, we aim to add to the conversation on the transition from undergraduate to graduate stages of education by examining personal statements written by engineering awardees of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) in one funding cycle. We examine these personal statements through the lens of Stewardship Theory, a framework that categorizes the activities conducted by PhD holders as stewards of their respective disciplines. We aim to understand how novice scholars are beginning to develop and communicate their academic and service work in a way that is valued by an academic community. By answering our overarching research question, “How do engineering undergraduates and early-career graduate students enact disciplinary Stewardship?” we can begin to map the development of disciplinary Stewardship and socialization into the expectations and norms of academia. Understanding this population of students will also assist us in studying patterns of graduate school enrolment and attrition. Examination of the high achieving accomplished students in our data set will shed light on characteristics that are needed to be successful and persistent graduate student. By highlighting patterns and themes from these participants, we will form a clearer picture of what experiences prepare students to navigate through common factors that contribute to attrition.
Funding Information:
This research was conducted out of a larger study intended to study graduate engineering students’ rhetorical academic engineering writing patterns, employing the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) as a platform for studying a standard and relatively short, yet authentic, writing experience. The NSF GRFP is an annual competition in which graduate students in their senior year of undergraduate or their first or second years of graduate school compete to win three years of external funding. While a variety of data is used to evaluate applicants, such as GRE and GPA scores and letters of recommendation, the unique feature of the NSF GRFP is the requirement to write a two page research proposal and a three page statement of personal goals (hereby referred to as the “personal statement”). In the award cycle in which this study was conducted, students could apply once as an undergraduate student, and both their years in graduate school, an affordance that has since changed.
Publisher Copyright:
© American Society for Engineering Education 2020.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/6/22
Y1 - 2020/6/22
N2 - The purpose of this research paper is to understand the trajectories of early-career graduate students and senior-level undergraduate students as they consider graduate school. To this end, we qualitatively examined a corpus of N=50 personal statements, taken from winners of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program in one award cycle, to understand the trajectories that researchers take going into graduate school. Current graduate engineering enrollment numbers are declining with engineering doctoral attrition rates estimated to be about 24% and 36% for males and females, respectively. Students from traditionally underrepresented minority groups record doctoral attrition rates higher than 50%. This study employs the lens of Stewardship Theory, a theory commonly used to characterize the practices and activities of experts and PhD holders in generating, transforming, and conserving knowledge. Applied to our study, Stewardship Theory illuminates how particular undergraduate experiences, such as research experiences, teaching assistantships, tutoring, or outreach experiences, form the beginnings of an academic identity as a steward of the discipline, and prepare students for graduate school. Analysis of these fellowship awardees will help us identify and categorize experiences that encourage and prepare students to pursue graduate level studies, not that every student should or wants to pursue graduate school, but to help students begin to form academic identities Our findings characterize the experiences that undergraduates and early-career graduate students have through this and use qualitative data to show how these experiences prepared students to envision their role as graduate students. As a result of these findings, the engineering education research and practice communities can better understand how students conceptualize graduate school, their career goals, and research-intensive careers to inform how these experiences are conducted. Our findings also hold implications for scholars studying the formation of the future professoriate, as the academic pipeline begins with students like the ones from which we collected data in this study.
AB - The purpose of this research paper is to understand the trajectories of early-career graduate students and senior-level undergraduate students as they consider graduate school. To this end, we qualitatively examined a corpus of N=50 personal statements, taken from winners of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program in one award cycle, to understand the trajectories that researchers take going into graduate school. Current graduate engineering enrollment numbers are declining with engineering doctoral attrition rates estimated to be about 24% and 36% for males and females, respectively. Students from traditionally underrepresented minority groups record doctoral attrition rates higher than 50%. This study employs the lens of Stewardship Theory, a theory commonly used to characterize the practices and activities of experts and PhD holders in generating, transforming, and conserving knowledge. Applied to our study, Stewardship Theory illuminates how particular undergraduate experiences, such as research experiences, teaching assistantships, tutoring, or outreach experiences, form the beginnings of an academic identity as a steward of the discipline, and prepare students for graduate school. Analysis of these fellowship awardees will help us identify and categorize experiences that encourage and prepare students to pursue graduate level studies, not that every student should or wants to pursue graduate school, but to help students begin to form academic identities Our findings characterize the experiences that undergraduates and early-career graduate students have through this and use qualitative data to show how these experiences prepared students to envision their role as graduate students. As a result of these findings, the engineering education research and practice communities can better understand how students conceptualize graduate school, their career goals, and research-intensive careers to inform how these experiences are conducted. Our findings also hold implications for scholars studying the formation of the future professoriate, as the academic pipeline begins with students like the ones from which we collected data in this study.
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UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85095723953&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:85095723953
SN - 2153-5965
VL - 2020-June
JO - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
JF - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
M1 - 654
T2 - 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference, ASEE 2020
Y2 - 22 June 2020 through 26 June 2020
ER -