Cano-Morales, M. L., & Weinberg, M. C., & Rodriguez Mejia, E., & Cruz, J. M., & Lee-Thomas, G., & Matusovich, H. M., & Artiles, M. S., & Mercado Rivera, A., & Adams, S. G. (2023, June), The Quest for URM Doctoral Persistence: An Analysis of Feedback Loops in the Academic System  Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--44479

\bibitem{asee_peer_44479}
  Cano-Morales, M. L., \& Weinberg, M. C., \& Rodriguez Mejia, E., \& Cruz, J. M., \& Lee-Thomas, G., \& Matusovich, H. M., \& Artiles, M. S., \& Mercado Rivera, A., \& Adams, S. G. (2023, June), \emph{The Quest for URM Doctoral Persistence: An Analysis of Feedback Loops in the Academic System}
  Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland.
  10.18260/1-2--44479

Martha Lucia Cano-Morales, Michael Corey Weinberg, Eduardo Rodriguez Mejia, Juan M. Cruz, Gwen Lee-Thomas, Holly M. Matusovich, Mayra S. Artiles, Abimelec Mercado Rivera, and Stephanie G. Adams.  "The Quest for URM Doctoral Persistence: An Analysis of Feedback Loops in the Academic System".  2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland, 2023, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2023.  https://peer.asee.org/44479 Internet.  07 Feb, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_44479}
  Martha Lucia Cano-Morales, Michael Corey Weinberg, Eduardo Rodriguez Mejia, Juan M. Cruz, Gwen Lee-Thomas, Holly M. Matusovich, Mayra S. Artiles, Abimelec Mercado Rivera, and Stephanie G. Adams.
  "The Quest for URM Doctoral Persistence: An Analysis of Feedback Loops in the Academic System".
  \emph{2023 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland, 2023, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2023.
  https://peer.asee.org/44479 Internet.  07 Feb, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_44479
author = "Martha Lucia Cano-Morales, Michael Corey Weinberg, Eduardo Rodriguez Mejia, Juan M. Cruz, Gwen Lee-Thomas, Holly M. Matusovich, Mayra S. Artiles, Abimelec Mercado Rivera, and Stephanie G. Adams"
title = "The Quest for URM Doctoral Persistence: An Analysis of Feedback Loops in the Academic System"
booktitle = "2023 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2023"
month = "June"
address = "Baltimore , Maryland"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/44479}
number = {10.18260/1-2--44479}
}

TY  - CPAPER
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 the 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. 

AU  - Martha Lucia Cano-Morales
AU  - Michael Corey Weinberg
AU  - Eduardo Rodriguez Mejia
AU  - Juan M. Cruz
AU  - Gwen Lee-Thomas
AU  - Holly M. Matusovich
AU  - Mayra S. Artiles
AU  - Abimelec Mercado Rivera
AU  - Stephanie G. Adams
CY  - Baltimore , Maryland
DA  - 2023/06/25
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - The Quest for URM Doctoral Persistence: An Analysis of Feedback Loops in the Academic System
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/44479
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--44479
ER  -