Graduate School Experience Research Articles

The emergence of contemporary criminology: an oral history of its development as an independent profession

Criminology, as an independent academic pursuit, has maturated to the point where it is now interested in exploring its genealogy. Larger soio-political developments evidenced a pattern of influence in terms of promoting ideas and building the field’s infrastructure. The field’s growth from its early professionalization is documented here through an analysis of oral histories offered by seventeen influential scholars. Respondents explained their respective journeys to the field via three avenues: biographical, intellectual, and through the graduate school experience. Four scholars spoke to the emotive elements that attracted them to the field. The remainder sought answers to nagging questions on either empirical or theoretical matters. Lastly, the semi-structured interviews elicited accounts of their respective graduate school curricula and the role of mentoring. The essential lesson to be drawn from the collective experience is that the graduate school experience should include exposure to the broader liberal tradition and on the history of the field.

Gender Inequality Across the Academic Life Course

AbstractRecent decades have witnessed increasing scholarly and public attention to the status of women in academia. Although women are now the majority of degree recipients and their share of initial academic appointments approximates their representation among degree recipients, substantial gender inequality persists. In this article, we review existing research on this topic, focusing on how gender inequality manifests and unfolds throughout the academic career life course, from graduate school experiences, through initial academic appointments, into the associate professor years, and, finally, to women's experiences as full professors and administrators. Throughout, we emphasize how institutionalized policies and subtle biases, rather than overt discrimination, perpetuate gender inequality. We conclude with suggested areas for future research.

Growth can come in phases.

Even though I work with microbes on a daily basis, I never thought I would relate to them in a personal way. Now, though, as I'm finishing up my Ph.D. and reflecting on my graduate school experience, I see an analogy between my own intellectual development as a scientist and the growth cycle of microbes when they are moved to a new environment. In both cases there are lag phases—periods in which there is little visible growth as the organisms adjust to their new surroundings—and growth phases once the organisms “learn” how to flourish. In retrospect I recognize that, for me as well as for the microbes, the seemingly unproductive lag phases, although sometimes discouraging, have been necessary preludes to the following growth phases. ![Figure][1] ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER > “I expect that I will go through more cycles of lag and growth.” My first lag phase occurred as I was transitioning from my early scientific training in China to my graduate program in the United States. In China, in addition to being taught the basics of lab techniques, I was instilled with the importance of the motto “publish or perish” and a magic number: the impact factor, which is widely accepted there as an objective, accurate measure for evaluating scientists. So I experienced great culture shock when I moved to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, for graduate school and learned that the impact factor is not as big a deal in the United States. “Then how do you evaluate scientists?” I asked one distinguished professor in my department, who is also involved in professor evaluation and promotion. “We read their papers,” he answered. “From the papers, we understand what problems they are tackling, how difficult they are, and what contributions they made to the field.” This was a revelation to me. The lag phase continued for my first few semesters of grad school, as I continued to adjust to the transition from China to the United States and from undergraduate training to graduate research. I wasn't making great progress in lab, but the time wasn't wasted. As I conducted my research, read papers, and discussed science with my classmates and professors, I started to appreciate that science is a continuous process of making discoveries through methodical, incremental, and creative problem-solving. Publishing is important, of course, but I began to realize that it is only a piece of the process. I was slowly and steadily transformed, until I was finally ready to emerge from my lag phase. My first growth phase occurred after I spent the first year and a half of grad school on a project that ended up refuting the hypothesis my adviser and I had initially developed. After a brief moment of disappointment and frustration, I decided to persevere by testing a different idea. This new tack led to my first eureka moment and later crystallized into my first conference talk and first publication. But after that, I found myself in another lag phase. For the last 2 years, I have struggled to generate enough biological material to follow up on my earlier work, and my morale has fallen. Meanwhile, to fulfill another part of the Ph.D. training requirement, I started teaching and therefore could not commit as much time to research as I wanted. Now, though, after much troubleshooting, I finally have a handle on how to solve the problem that had been holding up my experiments, and I sense that a second growth phase is coming. As I continue to encounter new situations and tackle new challenges, I expect that I will go through more cycles of lag and growth, and I hope that I will have the perspective and patience to appreciate the lag times as integral parts of my development. As for the many international students living in other countries to pursue your dreams of being scientists, if you are struggling, take heart from the fact that even microbes initially have a hard time when they are transferred into a new culture. [1]: pending:yes

Student Success Factors in Graduate Psychology Professional Programs

Research examining factors contributing to online students’ success typically focuses on a single point in time or completion of a single course, as well as individual difference variables, such as learning style or motivation, that may predispose a student to succeed. However, research concerning longer term online student outcomes, such as graduation rates or how events occurring during matriculation may impact students’ progress, is lacking. Moreover, little is known about the factors that contribute to graduate psychology students’ successful completion of their online degree programs. This exploratory archival study uniquely focuses on data gathered from admissions files and the student information system to identify and examine possible factors contributing to students’ final program grade point average (GPA) and graduation rates in two distinct, fully online masters of psychology programs. Findings derived from chi-square tests and regression and logistic regression analyses indicate that placement on academic probation at any time during enrollment is associated with both lower final program GPA and a decreased probability of graduation. Prior graduate school experience and taking a leave of absence (LOA) were also associated with lower probability of graduation, whereas failing any course during matriculation was associated with a lower final program GPA. Implications include identifying students who fail any course, take an LOA, and/or are placed on academic probation as “at risk,” and proactively connecting with them to provide tailored advisement and resources to support their continued matriculation.

Best Practices in Higher Education Graduate Programs: Preparing the Next Generation of Intercollegiate Athletics Administrators

The commercialization of intercollegiate athletics since the turn of the 21st century has led to an increasingly prevalent view of college athletics as “Big-Time Sport” business enterprises [Bowen, W. G., & Levin, S. A. (2011). Reclaiming the game: College sports and educational values. Princeton, NJ: University Press; Croissant, J. L. (2001). Can this campus be bought? Commercial influence in unfamiliar places. Academe, 87(5), 44–48; Lapchick, R. E. (2006). New game plan for college sport. Westport: Praeger; Sperber, M. (2000). Beer and circus: How big-time college sports has crippled undergraduate education. New York, NY: Macmillan.]. While college athletics often are associated with this big-business mentality in the media, the placement of intercollegiate athletics is fundamentally a functional unit nested within higher education institutions. To this end, the 21st century has marked a significant shift in the preparation patterns of intercollegiate athletic practitioners with programs that take a more holistic approach with curricula that encompass knowledge of higher education systems. This manuscript examines the career preparation patterns and graduate school experiences of aspiring intercollegiate athletic practitioners. Framed from a constructivist approach, this presentation draws from Kolb's [(1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall] Experiential Learning Theory to understand what contemporary professionals who aspire to work in intercollegiate athletics value in graduate preparation programs. This pilot study draws on the voices and narratives of graduate students who are currently completing athletic administration training, nested within higher education programs. Implications and recommendations are provided to inform and enhance graduate level preparation programs.

Varieties of research experience: Doctoral student perceptions of preparedness for future success

Scholarly research is important for the future career success of doctoral students. Additionally, today's doctoral students will drive the direction of tomorrow's management research. Therefore, it is vital to assess the factors that contribute to producing doctoral program graduates who are prepared to conduct research. This study surveyed Ph.D. students in management and related programs regarding research experiences in graduate school, and program emphasis on scientific rigor versus practical relevance. Although results varied by sub-discipline, findings showed relationships between these factors and current research productivity and perceptions of preparedness for future research-oriented job activities. Among the experience factors contributing to these outcomes were conducting research as part of a team, generating one's own research ideas, and being involved in externally funded research. Overall findings also suggested that Ph.D. programs emphasize theory over practice. Opportunities for improving management doctoral education and closing the relevance vs. rigor gap are discussed.

Learning Autoethnography: A Review of Autoethnography: Understanding Qualitative Research

Tony E. Adams, Stacy Jones, and Carolyn Ellis’ publication of Autoethnography explains the scope and process of conducting autoethnographic research and its uses of self-examination and society. As a recent graduate, the author examined his own experiences in graduate school and the debates over quantitative and qualitative research methodologies as he read the text. The book outlined the purposes, procedures, and methods to determine validity in autoethnographic research by proffering personal examples and narratives to elucidate the research paradigm.

Transformation of Rural Teachers Earning Graduate Degrees

This study tells the stories of four successful graduate students within a cohort of learners who were earning graduate degrees in technology for education and training by distance. The students were practicing teachers in the Dakota Interactive Academic Link (DIAL) consortium. Courses were offered by the University of South Dakota, using videoconferencing through the statewide Digital Distance Network (DDN) and WebCT asynchronous discussions. Mezirows 1991 theory of transformative learning suggests that adult learners may experience a transformational experience. Results showed that the four study participants experienced major changes in their way of thinking about learning and themselves. Conducting longitudinal studies in which adults are interviewed throughout their graduate school experience is recommended.

No Margin for Error: A Study of Two Women Balancing Motherhood and Ph.D. Studies

This cogenerative ethnography explored the lived experiences of two graduate students balancing Ph.D. studies and motherhood through McClusky’s (1963) Theory of Margi n. Specifically, we asked ourselves: What impact does pregnancy have on personal and academic selves and how are multiple roles and responsibilities managed? Through an analysis of dialogues, artifacts, conceptual maps, and narratives, examples of internal and external lo ad revealed the dynamic nature of the female experiences in graduate school. Excerpts from the data showed how roles, relationships, and experiences are characterized and how similar or different those example s were, given individual context. Implications of this research for students, faculty, and higher education policy are explored.

The Relationship between School/Department Rankings, Student Achievements, and Student Experiences: The Case of Psychology

What predicts academic success during graduate school? What are the experiences of graduate students in terms of happiness, stress level, relationships in the program, and feelings of autonomy/competence? Responses from 3,311 graduate students from all psychological disciplines in the US and Canada were collected to answer questions involving (1) the relationship between student-level variables and department/school rankings (US News & World Report, Carnegie Foundation, National Research Council), (2) the determinants of important student-level variables such as number of publications, posters, and life satisfaction, and (3) examining the variables year-by-year in the program to explain changes over time at different points in the graduate career. Results reveal the degree to which certain aspects of higher ranked departments/schools impact student achievements such as number of publications and teaching experience. The results also reveal a unique year-by-year progression including a consistent decrease of happiness for every year in graduate school. While the findings were collected in psychology, the answers to these questions may resonate with graduate students across disciplines that are experiencing similar forces that characterize the graduate school experience. The results can also inform current conversations about the direction of higher education and the value of the graduate school experience.

Defining the Graduate College Experience: What it “Should” versus “Does” Include

Gaps between expectations and actual educational experience may influence motivation, learning and performance. The graduate college experience (GCE) is shrouded in myth and legend that may create unrealistic expectations, while its reality includes elements of politics, economics and organizational psychology. This study examined 1,629 present and former graduate students’ perceptions of what their graduate school experiences should and did include. The sample was analyzed as a whole and also divided and tested for subgroup differences by: degree types (masters and doctorate); at four different points along their degree paths (entrance, midpoint, exit, alumni); and by disciplinary subgroups (hard sciences, social sciences, arts, interdisciplinary). Statistically significant differences were found between subgroups on perceptions of what the GCE “should” and “does” include separately. Further, within-groups comparison of what the graduate college experience “should” and “does” include showed significant differences for the whole group and all subgroups. In addition, the differences between graduate students’ expected and actual experience (should - does) negatively predicted overall satisfaction with their graduate experience. These contrasts of students’ actual and expected graduate experiences present potential to explain some of graduate students’ dissatisfaction and non-completion, and offer information to support program improvement and retention of graduate students.

The So-What Question

The So-What Question Alice Kessler-Harris (bio) As I think of the history of women’s history, I think of the challenges that we faced at the start of the process: Gerda Lerner called the kind of history we started out with contributions history. We had an obligation, she insisted, to prove that the history of women could be written by excavating the sources that demonstrated not only that women had been present in history but that their absence impoverished the historical enterprise. Women, she wrote, had not simply been adjuncts to history; they had been an essential component of it. Those early excavations opened the field up to the hostile question asked by many of our mostly male colleagues and later taken up by Gerda. So what? So what if we uncovered women? How did our understanding of the past change when we added women to the mix? What did we understand about social circumstance that we had not previously understood? Did finding and including women change our conceptions of the historical process? So What? It’s a question that led Gerda ultimately into her last books, including Why History Matters. It is a question I still ask my graduate students. In the 1970s, the years when I worked with Gerda most closely, we (we em-battled historians of women) were happy to answer that question simply: adding women, we argued, enriches our knowledge. As Suzanne Lebsock often said, it makes us smarter. We proudly celebrated the recovery of lost women, especially of previously invisible women of color, of the poor, of the wage-earning minority. And yet we sought to rethink the notion of women’s history as a systemic process best comprehended relationally. As students of African American history were beginning to do for race, we wanted to know how the social relations of the sexes affected historical change. Gerda Lerner initially opposed this initiative for fear that historians would neglect women in favor of masculinity. She had earlier, in her pioneering Black Women in White America, diverted larger questions of race by uncovering a wide array of sources that documented the history of black women. By revealing the presence of sources that illuminated the historical presence of black women, she launched a generation of historians on new research agendas. One might say that she briefly stymied the turn to gender history by insisting on women as the subject of our investigations. Organizing her next book around “women’s culture” and “the female experience,” she sought to demonstrate commonality among women—to find in their shared and quotidian [End Page 12] experiences the sources of a collective consciousness and, ultimately, of women’s liberation. That move proved problematic for students of race and of class, like me. I had learned rather painfully to pay attention to relational questions in the course of a dissertation on New York’s Jewish immigrant community of the 1890s. Focusing on the Jewish labor movement, I had entirely ignored the existence of women on the then-prevailing assumption that paid work was for men and that the labor movement was therefore necessarily male. The motivating forces for social change, I believed, emanated from differences in religion and ethnicity and above all tensions in class and culture. I defended my dissertation in 1968, just in time to discover an emerging women’s movement. Informed by my uncomfortable graduate school experience as a woman, and embarrassed that I had systematically discarded evidence about women’s activism, I began research on my first articles by searching for the women workers and trade unionists I had missed. I was, as you can imagine, acutely conscious of class. Already familiar with the work of E. P. Thompson, who defined class as an ongoing interaction between traditional cultures and the tensions created by new means of production, I quickly became involved in a Marxist-feminist study group. This posed conceptual problems: If class and ethnicity and religion had constituted the analytic centers of my questions as a labor historian, how would I incorporate gender? What role would it play in the historical dramas I was trying to illuminate? So what if I found the laboring women? What...

The impact of supervised mentorship on music education master's degree students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of supervised mentorship in an authentic-context learning setting on music education graduate students' graduate school experiences. Participants were six current and former graduate music education majors who acted as supervised mentors to undergraduate students teaching instrumental music in an elementary school. We collected data via formal interviews and used classroom observations for triangulation. Each participant completed three interviews during the course of the academic year. We observed the participants teaching and mentoring multiple times and gave them feedback on their work with undergraduate teachers. We identified five emergent themes: pedagogical knowledge, psychological development, social development, educational experiences and identity development. Graduate students participating in supervised mentorship experienced positive growth in each of the five themes. Based on our findings, we developed a conceptual model that represents the impact of supervised mentorship on music education graduate students' graduate school experiences. In this model, we attempted to demonstrate the interconnectedness of multiple themes as well as possible outcomes. Several implications for these findings exist. Because a growing number of states within the USA require graduate degrees for continuing certification within three to five years of entry into the profession, perhaps programmes with supervised mentorship opportunities could offer more relevant, meaningful and enjoyable experiences for early career music educators.

Stressors, Level of Stress and Coping Mechanism Adopted by Undergradute Nursing Students

Stress is fact of life that every human deals with on a daily basis. Stress has long been regarded as a common part of the graduate school experience, comparing with medical, law, psychology, and chemistry graduate students. The stressors include struggling to meet academic standards, time and money management, worries, and concern over grades and relationship with senior students, faculty, and family members. Coping with stress is the recognition of what aspects of life are contributing to excessive stress. Knowledge about stressors can help in coping and thus reduces the severity of stress reactions.1

Mentoring African American Men During Their Postsecondary and Graduate School Experiences: Implications for the Counseling Profession

African American men seek mental health services at significantly lower levels than do their White counterparts. The authors explore the role of mentoring for young African American men and discuss impediments to their success at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Additionally, examples are presented of evidence‐based interventions and recommendations for effectively working with African American men.

How do they get here?: Paths into physics education research

Physics education research (PER) is a relatively new and rapidly growing area of Ph.D. specialization. To sustain the field of PER, a steady pipeline of talented scholars needs to be developed and supported. One aspect of building this pipeline is understanding how students come to graduate and postdoctoral work in PER and what their career goals are. This paper presents the first study on the experiences and career pathways of students in PER. Data were collected through open-ended interviews with 13 graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in PER. Results show that many of these PER graduate students and postdoctoral scholars were not aware of PER as undergraduates. PER graduate students that were aware of PER as undergraduates chose to study PER as they were applying to graduate schools. The graduate school experiences of the interviewees were overwhelmingly positive, with participants reporting a positive climate that was facilitated by communicative and productive relationships with their advisors. However, some participants reported concerns about the acceptance of PER within some departments, including open hostility towards the field. The majority of participants were interested in pursuing a career as a university faculty member, with more participants preferring a position at a research-intensive university. These results suggest that a further large-scale study of graduate students in PER may be able to highlight the field as being a leader in student mentoring and community development while collecting important demographic information that could show PER to have more gender diversity than other subfields of physics.

Female physicist doctoral experiences

The underrepresentation of women in physics doctorate programs and in tenured academic positions indicates a need to evaluate what may influence their career choice and persistence. This qualitative paper examines eleven females in physics doctoral programs and professional science positions in order to provide a more thorough understanding of why and how women make career choices based on aspects both inside and outside of school and their subsequent interaction. Results indicate that female physicists experience conflict in achieving balance within their graduate school experiences and personal lives and that this then influences their view of their future careers and possible career choices. Female physicists report both early and long-term support outside of school by family, and later departmental support, as being essential to their persistence within the field. A greater focus on informal and out-of-school science activities for females, especially those that involve family members, early in life may help influence their entrance into a physics career later in life. Departmental support, through advisers, mentors, peers, and women's support groups, with a focus on work-life balance can help females to complete graduate school and persist into an academic career.

Spoketokenism: Black women talking back about graduate school experiences

Black women still experience racial oppression in the academy. In this study, I draw on Black feminist theory and oral narrative research to examine the narratives of Black women graduate students discussing their educational experiences. Black female graduate students deal with acts of everyday racism and instances of structural and internalized oppression. I explore the communicative strategies Black women use to get through their graduate programs. More specifically, I address two emergent themes: (1) Black women as spoketokens; and (2) the risks and consequences of talking back in the face of racial oppression. Ultimately, the academic experiences of Black women have a profound impact on how they wish to be perceived and how they see their role in representing Black female identity.

School Rankings, Department Rankings, and Individual Accomplishments

The outcome of a graduate student’s hunt for employment is often attributed to the student’s own accomplishments, the reputation of the department, and the reputation of the university. In 2007, a national survey of psychology graduate students was conducted to assess accomplishments and experiences in graduate school, part of which was an assessment of employment after completion of the doctorate (PhD). Five hundred and fifty-one respondents who had applied for employment reported whether they had obtained employment and in what capacity. Survey results were then integrated with the National Research Council’s most recent official ranking system of academic departments. The strongest predictor of employment was department-level rankings even while controlling for individual accomplishments, such as publications, posters, and teaching experience. Equally accomplished applicants for an employment position were not equal, apparently, if they graduated from differently ranked departments. The results also show the degree to which school-level rankings, department-level rankings, and individual accomplishments uniquely predict the various types of employment, including jobs at PhD-granting institutions, master’s-granting institutions, liberal arts colleges, 2-year schools, outside academia, or no employment at all.

Beyond the Program Year: Graduates Students’ Understanding of How McNair Scholars Program Participation Impacts Their Experiences in Graduate School

The Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program‘s goal is to introduce first-generation, low-income, underrepresented group college students to effective strategies for succeeding in graduate programs. One way to explore program effectiveness beyond graduate admission is to ask the McNair graduates themselves. This interview study explores McNair graduates understandings of issues they face in adjusting to graduate school and how McNair participation prepared them for addressing these issues. Typically McNair program evaluations emphasize the collection and analysis of quantitative data – e.g. academic performance and degree attainment; however, little qualitative research has been conducted on graduate‘s perceptions of the impact of program participation on graduate school adjustment and success. Using Bourdieu‘s concept of cultural capital, along with Sociology-based ideas of role-as-resource and role mastery, this study will explore students‘ perceptions of the McNair program‘s effectiveness in regards to helping them understand the ―graduate student‖ role and to use that role to succeed in graduate school. Faculty Mentor: Dr. Peter Collier