encouraging students to develop their own agency through avariety of course assignments afforded students the opportunity to develop adaptive perspectivesand a sense of control as they navigated troublesome shifts in professional identity. We alsofound evidence that students felt the program provides a sense of community, autonomy overprofessional development, and opportunity for exploration and self-discovery. Finally, instudents’ final written reflections on the course, we found evidence of increased sense of controlover their unique career development path and growth of their mentor network.We discuss the relevance of these findings for theory on interdisciplinary identity developmentand design of professional development courses to increase
professional developmentstreams, and a resolute approach to Scaffolding Instruction that leads to mastery in the student's area offocus. The last two components provide feedback and reflection: Assessment of Performance Learningquantifies students' progress, and Reflection and Evaluation, where improvement opportunities help thestudent to develop further. Incorporating personalization at every touchpoint of a graduate student'sacademic journey creates an authentic, customized, student-centered approach to graduate education.This paper describes the model, the literature behind its development, and the assessments used to guidestudents.IntroductionGraduate STEM training and career preparation has historically followed a "one size fits all" approach
increase in heat-related death, damage to land, plants, andanimals, a rise in life-threatening infectious diseases “such as dengue, malaria, vibriosis, andWest Nile virus” [1], peril to water security, sanitation, and food production, harm to livelihoodsand economic loss. Preparing the next generation of Environmental Professionals to tacklethese and additional challenges is daunting. This paper shares some preliminary reflections onsix short workshops to humanize care, commitment, skill, and responsibility for the heavy liftinginvolved in facing the effects of climate change. The workshops introduce graduate students tothe concept and practice of transdisciplinarity, weaving together topics from interculturalcompetence, community-engaged practice
resources.In addition to fulfilling the course requirements for the STEM education Ph.D. curriculum, thisseries of meetings helps build community among the students and faculty members. It providesan opportunity to share insights and experiences while having faculty members present to helpguide processes and discussions. A goal is to create a strong foundation of collaboration that willtranscend the course and continue beyond its requirements. As students progress in theirrespective research, this course can provide a venue to continually give back to the program.This paper will provide a reflection on the experience of three STEM education Ph.D. studentswho participated in the redesigned seminar course. STEM education students who participated inthe
Recitation sessions – Methodology November 5 Methodology Due 100 December 1, 2023 Mid-Term Project Reflection 25 December 1, 2023 TOTAL 500 TABLE 3 SPRING – CAPSTONE II Point Description Due Date s Recitation Session - Data Analysis / Solutions / December, January ROI
andprovide flexible learning opportunities [9,10]. These efforts reflect a broader recognition of theimportance of communication skills in graduate education and a commitment to preparingstudents for the multifaceted demands of their professional and academic futures.The University of Connecticut has taken a step to advance its graduate engineering curriculumby recognizing the significance of structured support in scientific communication and overallcareer preparation for graduate students. The university has launched a ProfessionalDevelopment (PD) course series uniquely tailored to boost the success of its graduate students.This program distinguishes itself through its focus on career advancement and developingessential core skills for graduate
effectively ona team, integrate information from multiple sources, communicate with written and visualmaterial, and make connections across disciplines 18 .PBL is not inherently transdisciplinary or convergent, but PBL can be used to teach and addressconvergent problems. While PBL is not the only way to learn convergence methodologies, it canbe an efficient “means” to the “end” which is understanding and implementing convergencemethodologies. It emphasizes the process of question identification and framing as much asproblem solving, encouraging students to iterate and seek feedback, and to reflect on theirapproach and proposed solution. Additionally, outcomes of PBL are similar to the skills neededfor the future of convergence research in industry
. students in engineering – from motivations and persistenceto encounters with racial microaggressions – the disparity remains, underscoring the need fordeeper exploration.Utilizing autoethnography, this study illuminates the journey of a Black female engineer fromNigeria during her inaugural semester in a U.S.-based civil engineering Ph.D. program. Theresearch hinges on two pivotal questions: what early challenges did she confront, and how did shetraverse them? To answer these questions, reflective journals and audio diaries maintainedconsistently by the researcher were employed. These data sources were subjected to inductivecoding via Dedoose to tease out dominant themes.This research findings highlight critical challenges this international
, enhanced teamwork and sustainedprofessional development.The professional identity of doctoral students is defined by their acknowledgment andrecognition of their major through rigorous study, research, and practical applicationof their academic disciplines. Furthermore, it reflects their eagerness to proactivelyadhere to professional and occupational norms, and to pursue this career as a personallifelong goal.[11,12] Identity in the field of engineering education also focuses on theoverall process of an individual's transformation from an "outsider" to a community inthe field of engineering, such as awareness and perception of the content ofspecialized knowledge in engineering, the significance of the profession, thecharacteristics of the
communities in the United StatesAbstractThis paper shares and compares the experiences of initiating and sustaining two graduatestudent-led international ethnic engineering education scholarly communities for Chinese andAfrican groups. Our goal is to reflect on our lived experiences and inspire future students andacademics to cultivate such communities to broaden participation and enhance researchcapability. We adopt the Community of Practice (CoP) as the theoretical framework and opt forcomparative ethnographic narrative analysis as the method in this paper. Specifically, we focusedon the following dimensions of two communities led by the two authors: (1) the origin andpurpose; (2) the characteristics; and (3) practices. Our findings suggest that
courses,and a short description of these courses can be found on our university Graduate School website[9].For students’ professional development, the NRT offered a seminar series in the fall and springsemesters, which included eight sessions (twice a month) each semester. NRT Seminar is a 0-credit hour seminar that has been offered on a Credit/No Credit basis. Students completed up tofour semesters of NRT Seminar. The NRT Seminar consisted of training sessions related toinclusion, career pathways, campus resources, skill development to communicate acrossdisciplines and to diverse audiences, and exposure to FEW research initiatives. Internal orexternal guest speakers gave talks during seminar. Students completed a reflection activity aftereach
and safe working conditions being ahot-button issue in graduate education for decades, nowhere in engineering education research isit discussed [15]. Should research in our field align itself more with the university than thepopulations being studied? How should we be studying doctoral engineering students? Whatproblems should we be highlighting?The Role of Doctoral Engineering StudentsTo decide what direction work in the field should take, we must first understand what roles andresponsibilities doctoral engineering students have at their universities.As existing literature and legislation reflect, the doctoral engineering student has long existed inan ambiguous space [15], [16]. Universities do not consistently classify them as either staff
near-peer mentoring between graduate students and undergraduate transfer students in engineering and computingIntroduction Mentoring is a practice in which a student, or mentee, and a more experienced individual,a mentor, engage in a relationship that includes advising or instructing by the mentor to thementee. This type of relationship can be seen throughout academia and is commonly foundbetween staff members and students. The concept of near-peer mentoring reflects the ideas andgoals of traditional mentorship but is formed between individuals who are at similar experiencelevels, personally or professionally, where the mentor and mentee relate to one another due tosimilar age proximity, shared goals, common experiences, or
departmental community. In this framework, CoP ischaracterized by constant knowledge generation, application, and reproduction, highlighting thedynamic nature of engagement.Within this framework, the diverse adoption of mentoring tools reflects the autonomy of individualfaculty members as distinct nodes in the advising network. There are no formal requirementsconcerning doctoral student mentoring to support graduate advising and faculty members are freeto adopt tools (or not) that they perceive to be most appropriate or work best. However, the CIMERprogram allows faculty members in the department to receive training to train others, it is throughthis initiative that other faculty in the more peripheral mode of participation get to learn fromtrained
marginalized groups,including Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and Indigenous students in STEM, is imperative to maintainthe U.S. standing as a global leader in innovation.We reported on the development procedure for a multi-factor organizational climate survey forengineering doctoral student retention. Engineering doctoral graduates account for a large shareof the innovation workforce [2], but the engineering doctoral pipeline does not reflect thediversity of the U.S. population. For example, in 2022, women earned 26.2% of the engineeringdoctoral degrees awarded in the U.S., with fewer than half of those women being U.S. residents.Of those degrees, American Indian women earned 0.1%, Black women earned 5.0%, multiracialwomen earned 5.3%, Latina women earned
a second language.This may impact their ability to thrive in the first semester. Lack of confidence to engage inconversations during the first semester could also affect their ability to navigate the academicexpectations as well as their willingness to explore and utilize campus resources. In this paper,first-semester international students in a graduate engineering program were asked to reflect ontheir academic experience to identify the critical success factors. An anonymous, non-scientificsurvey was designed to gather feedback from the students at the end of their first semester. Allstudents in the class were international students taking on-campus courses in the United Statesfor the first time. The following section presents a brief
goes beyond explicit content, aiming to identify underlying concepts, patterns, and thus themes that are not at first apparent; it entails interpreting data to uncover the implicit, or hidden, meanings and insights in a particular text. We analyzed this secondary dataset in repeated and systematic movements between these different phases in a spirit of inquiry and interpretation toward answering our proposed research questions[79], [80], [81], [82], [83], and viewed our reflection and activeroles as both researchers and IDR program members as crucially important to addressing the inevitable subjectivity of the Qualitative paradigm. pecifically, we first established Familiarization based on
rather than reflecting on the past 9 . There any many examples in the literatureof works using this method for centering the experiences of individuals with marginalized identi-ties 10,11,12 . In order to emphasize the need for this work, we have reviewed the literature to findexamples of lived experiences similar to ours to emphasize that these are not isolated incidencesof struggle. Doctoral education begins not with admission to a university, but instead application to pro-grams within that university according to their alignment with a student’s research interests. Oncematriculated into a graduate program, young academics bring diverse life experiences that mayconflict with the typical impression of who belongs. These feelings which have
review. Researchers utilized a working definition of the term “workforce development” to refer to any program that was preparing students for the workforce. Additionally, to maintain a focused scope, only peer-reviewed journals and conference papers were included. However, in the future, we plan to examine all available sources of literature. Considering the shifts in the engineering workforce practices due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this literature search was limited to sources published post-2020. This timeframe was chosen to accurately reflect the current state and needs of the workforce, which has increasingly adopted hybrid and remote working modalities. Microsoft Teams (Version 1.6.00.35956) and Zotero (Version 6.0.30) were
5 19 6.20 8.83 Very 37 80 46.25 37.20 Total 77 215 ~97 ~100Not all students answered all of the questions, so the totals for each question are unique. Thepercentages reflect the answers to the specific survey question. As well, not all students whoresponded to this question were online learners. The table above is included to show opinions ofthe importance of online course offerings. Of these respondents, 42.5% of returners elected toenroll in coursework, while only 25.6% of direct pathway did.Respondents were asked how confident they were to complete
university to cultivate a moreinclusive and supportive social environment, fostering interactions between local andinternational students. Initiatives such as the Interaction for Learning Framework [18] couldserve as valuable tools for enhancing intercultural engagement within the university community.Specifically: • Beginning with the demographic data, it is evident that the international student cohort in the Construction Management graduate program is diverse, representing countries such as Pakistan, Nigeria, Colombia, Bolivia, India, Jamaica, Ghana, and Mexico. The gender distribution among international student respondents reflects a balanced representation, with 56% male and 44% female, contributing to a dynamic
academic andprofessional progress of students enrolled in higher education and, therefore, exploring thecontributions of advising to the achievements of international students. This is part one of agreater study; hence, it requires interviewing more students and getting more insight into theseissues. Subsequent research should expand this study into further and deeper directions, hopingto provide detailed descriptions that capture the spaces between reflections to make strongerrecommendations to improve intercultural competency in academic advising.Bibliography[1]. C. W. Yao and L. M. Vital, “Reflexivity in international contexts: Implications for U.S.doctoral students international research preparation,” International Journal of Doctoral Studies
is primarily utilized to answer our research question. By comparing thepercentages of different survey categories, we provide evidence of the transformation of learnedknowledge into continuous practices, reflecting the threshold concept [17]’s transformative,(possibly) irreversible, and integrative nature.MethodThis study was part of a larger NSF-funded study examining the impact of the GAPS course indeveloping project management skills. Our previous efforts to assess the effectiveness of thecourse focused on disseminating surveys to students before and immediately after the course toevaluate students’ interests and knowledge regarding PM skills [4] [6]. Our findingsdemonstrated that students perceived the course to be useful in developing
paper is meant to provide adetailed account of the perceptions of five students in one course.Another limitation of this work is that terms such as “sense of community” and “trust” were notdefined for students, so their responses to the focus group questions reflect their ownunderstanding of what these terms mean. In future iterations of this work, we could ask studentsquestions such as: In your view, what does it look like to have a classroom community? Is havinga sense of community important to you in your graduate courses? Why or why not?It could also be helpful to explain to the students the purpose of the focus group beforehand.Students seemed to be expecting to give feedback in a manner similar to a course evaluation andanswer questions
three themes related to advisor-advisee communication: Mutual Trust, ClearExpectations, and Delivery of Feedback.Mutual TrustWhen asked if they would share information about their neurodiversity-related experiences,strengths, and challenges with their advisor, most participants expressed some hesitation aboutdoing so, suggesting that students may not have the necessary trust in their advisor-adviseerelationship to facilitate these types of discussions. Wendy, who later on in her programdeveloped open communication with her advisor about neurodiversity, reflected on her earlyperception that she was not safe discussing her experiences with ADHD, saying: I think it would be something that might be helpful to share with my advisor
given discipline would have both UI and CD components, but their relative emphasis may varygreatly from one discipline to the next. In all cases, the training of students should becommensurate with the prospects of their career plans and expectations of their potentialemployers. Thus, for instance, within UI-dominated disciplines, there should be a greateremphasis on providing resources for establishing industrial connections.Lastly, the findings highlight the importance of refining academic course plans and institutionalsupport for effective doctoral training. The emphasis on incorporating problem-solving, dataanalytics, and writing skills into coursework reflects a commitment to aligning academic trainingwith the broader skills needed for