Mayra Artiles Fonseca

Motivating Successful Advising: Creating Productive Doctoral Advising Relationships in Engineering

Period: 2021-2023

Sponsor: ASU Kern Grant

This study aims to identify and characterize the advising practices faculty in Chemical Engineering believe to be effective when working with doctoral students. By effective, we mean mutually beneficial for students and advisors such that students are supported in ways that are helpful to them and faculty are able to meet productivity demands (i.e., value is created for both parties). We anticipate that our findings would be transferable to other engineering disciplines with context-appropriate (discipline and specific school) modifications. Specifically, this project aims to address the following research questions:

• RQ1: What advising practices do faculty members in Chemical Engineering believe are most effective when advising doctoral students?
• RQ2: How do faculty assess effectiveness of doctoral advising practices?

This study will address these research questions using the entrepreneurial mindset (EM) through a series of faculty advising workshops that will also serve as focus groups for data collection. Through these activities, we will engage faculty in conversations about doctoral advising and what they believe to be effective advising to engage our curiosity on this topic and make connections between what is known in the advising literature and experienced in practice.

Collaborative Research: The Rising Doctoral Institute Funding

Period: 2021-2025

Sponsor: National Science Foundation (Award: 2029796)

Research has shown that underrepresented historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups (African American, Hispanic American, Native American, and Pacific Island) are finishing the doctorate in engineering in lesser rates than their majority peers. For every seven doctorates in engineering granted to majority students, only one minority will obtain one. To address this problem, we developed the Rising Doctoral Institute (RDI) which aims to provide a timely and preparatory experience for rising doctoral students in engineering to address issues related to transitioning into the PhD encountered by underrepresented students. However, we understand that a single intervention will not change the landscape for underrepresented PhD students. For this reason, our proposed project aims to develop a research-based intervention model of this preparatory experience and develop a community of practice among institutional partners to develop and adapt this model for local contexts. Integral to the project is an investigation of the dynamics of academic systems and how implementing programs like the RDI can influence systemic change within the institution. Thus, the goals of the proposed project are to (1) research the effect of early interventions for doctoral students on the transition into the engineering doctorate, and (2) develop sustainable models for institutions to implement on their campus to help underrepresented students' transition into the doctorate.