One of the most important developmental relationships in the doctoral student experience is that of the faculty advisor, and yet we know little about whether and how advisor relationships vary between first-generation and continuing-generation doctoral students. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 83 late-stage doctoral students in biological sciences, we explore differences in student perceptions of their relationships with advisors. Narratives reveal a continuum of relationship types, including strained, evolving, supportive, and equal. In equal relationships, doctoral students feel more like collegial partners working alongside their advisors. While continuing-generation and first-generation students are similarly represented among strained and evolving relationships, first-generation students rarely attain equal relationship status. The presented findings offer implications for understanding how inequality shapes student–advisor relationships, the role of collegiality in doctoral education’s hidden curriculum, and the supports needed to foster equity for first-generation students in graduate programs. © 2024 by the authors.

Prior literature has documented the importance of faculty advisors in the doctoral student socialization process, with a few studies describing negative advising relationships characterized by disengagement, disinterest, unsupportive behavior, and interpersonal conflict. We extend this research by exploring how negative advising relationships emerge and develop over time. Examining longitudinal interviews over four years with 15 doctoral students in biological sciences in the USA who experienced negative relationships with their advisors, we illuminate how negative advising relationships unfold over the course of graduate studies. We find two primary patterns in challenging relationships: some students show a gradual decline in relationship health over time, while others point to a single event altering their relationship trajectory. We also identify specific factors that shape each of these negative relationship types. By revealing the different social processes that underlie the emergence of negative advising relationships, our findings provide a valuable contribution to understanding the complex social landscape of doctoral education. The findings further the dialogue on how faculty advisors can craft successful pathways through graduate education, thereby supporting the academic and professional success of doctoral students. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2024.

Purpose - While ample literature describes students' experiences during graduate school, fewer studies examine how doctoral students transition into full-time employment post degree completion. The purpose of this study is to examine how faculty advisors, as well as other individuals, shape students' experiences during a critical period in their graduate education - the job search. Design/methodology/approach - This study is based on interviews with 47 PhD students in biological sciences in the US. This is a descriptive qualitative study, based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Findings - Results reveal distinct roles that faculty advisors play in the job search process, including supportive, unsupportive and sponsorship. Supportive advisors offer opportunities for skill development and specific guidance during the job search process. Sponsorship advisors go beyond providing general support to leverage their personal networks to assist in the transition into full-time employment. Unsupportive advisors are on the other end of the spectrum and do not provide any assistance. In addition, the majority of doctoral students rely on individuals beyond their advisors during the job search, and they do so regardless of what type of support they receive from their advisors. Originality/value - Presented findings highlight the complex constellation of social connections that graduate students draw on for entry into the career and make a compelling case for extending socialization research to dedicate more attention to students' transition into full-time employment after degree completion.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine how doctoral students in the biological sciences understand their research skill development and explore potential racial/ethnic and gender inequalities in the scientific learning process. Design/methodology/approachBased on interviews with 87 doctoral students in the biological sciences, this study explores how doctoral students describe development of their research skills. More specifically, a constructivist grounded theory approach is employed to understand how doctoral students make meaning of their research skill development process and how that may vary by gender and race/ethnicity. FindingsThe findings reveal two emergent groups, technicians who focus on discrete tasks and data collection, and interpreters who combine technical expertise with attention to the larger scientific field. Although both groups are developing important skills, interpreters have a broader range of skills that support successful scholarly careers in science. Notably, white men are overrepresented among the interpreters, whereas white women and students from minoritized racial/ethnic groups are concentrated among the technicians. Originality/valueWhile prior literature provides valuable insights into the inequalities across various aspects of doctoral socialization, scholars have rarely attended to examining inequalities in research skill development. This study provides new insights into the process of scientific learning in graduate school. Findings reveal that research skill development is not a uniform experience, and that doctoral education fosters different kinds of learning that vary by gender and race/ethnicity.

Background: Extensive research has documented the importance of faculty advisors for graduate students' experiences and outcomes. Recent research has begun to provide more nuanced accounts illuminating different dimensions of advisor support as well as attending to inequalities in students' experiences with advisors. Purpose: We extend the research on graduate student advisor relationships in two important ways. First, building on the concept of social capital, and in particular the work on institutional agents, we illuminate specific benefits associated with student-advisor relationships. Second, we advance prior work on inequality in advisor relationships by examining students' experiences at the intersection of race and gender. Research Design: To illuminate the nuances of graduate students' experiences with advisors, this study included interviews with 79 students pursuing PhD's in biological sciences. Thematic coding revealed several important dimensions of benefits associated with advisor relationships. Corresponding codes were grouped into three categories, describing three groups of students with notably different experiences with advisors. Findings: The data revealed three distinct student-advisor relationship profiles which we term scholars, subordinates, and marginals. The three groups had vastly different experiences with access to knowledge and resources, access to networks, and cultivation of independence. Moreover, the distribution across these three groups was highly unequal with unique patterns observed at the intersection of race and gender. White men benefited from both racial and gender privilege and were notably overrepresented in the scholars group while White women and racial/ethnic minority (REM) students were more likely to be socialized as subordinates. REM men had the least favorable experiences with the majority of them being in the marginal category, along with a substantial proportion of White and REM women. Notably, even experiences of negative relationships with advisors were gendered and raced: REM men's negative relationships with advisors were characterized by benign neglect while women primarily experienced conflictual relationships. Conclusion and Recommendations: The findings illuminate important consequences of student-advisor relationships and pronounced inequalities in who has access to benefits accrued through those relationships. Creating more equitable experiences will necessitate substantial attention to improving mentoring and eliminating gender and racial/ethnic inequalities in faculty support.

While previous research documents that women in STEM doctoral programs tend to fare better when their advisor shares their gender identity, this study provides new insights into the role of student-advisor gender identity congruence, relying on a longitudinal sample of doctoral students in biology and using structural equation and latent growth curve modeling. Findings show that advisor gender played an inconsistent and typically indirect role in predicting student outcomes. Further, all students, regardless of gender, tended to report higher quality advising when their advisor was a woman, pointing to potential gender inequities in advising expectations of faculty. Implications for research, theory, and practice are discussed.

Graduate students' mental health and well-being is a prominent concern across various disciplines. However, early predictors of mental health and well-being in graduate education, specifically doctoral education, have rarely been studied. The present study evaluated both the underlying latent classification of individuals' mental well-being and predictors of those classifications. Results estimated two latent classes of students' mental health and well-being: one class with generally high levels of mental well-being and one with lower levels of mental well-being. Regression analyses showed that mentoring in the second year of doctoral study, certainty of choice in the third year, and both academic development and sense of belonging in the fourth year were positive predictors of membership in the higher mental well-being class. In contrast to some prior studies, demographic variables were not related to the identified well-being classifications. Regression analyses further showed that mental well-being was negatively related to participants' number of publications and research self-efficacy, indicating a problematic relationship between scholarly productivity and confidence and well-being. These findings may be used to identify and provide targeted support for students who are at-risk for having or developing lower levels of mental well-being in their graduate programs.

Threshold concepts are transformative elements of domain knowledge that enable those who attain them to engage domain tasks in a more sophisticated way. Existing research tends to focus on the identification of threshold concepts within undergraduate curricula as challenging concepts that prevent attainment of subsequent content until mastered. Recently, threshold concepts have likewise become a research focus at the level of doctoral studies. However, such research faces several limitations. First, the generalizability of findings in past research has been limited due to the relatively small numbers of participants in available studies. Second, it is not clear which specific skills are contingent upon mastery of identified threshold concepts, making it difficult to identify appropriate times for possible intervention. Third, threshold concepts observed across disciplines may or may not mask important nuances that apply within specific disciplinary contexts. The current study therefore employs a novel Bayesian knowledge tracing (BKT) approach to identify possible threshold concepts using a large data set from the biological sciences. Using rubric-scored samples of doctoral students' sole-authored scholarly writing, we apply BKT as a strategy to identify potential threshold concepts by examining the ability of performance scores for specific research skills to predict score gains on other research skills. Findings demonstrate the effectiveness of this strategy, as well as convergence between results of the current study and more conventional, qualitative results identifying threshold concepts at the doctoral level.

Despite increased enrolment of women and students from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups in doctoral programs, notable inequalities in academic careers persist. We investigate one potential source of these inequalities: publication rates during graduate school. Results, based on a sample of doctoral students in biological sciences across 53 institutions, indicate that both white women and students from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups (African American and Latinx) have lower publication rates than white men. Notably, these gaps grow over time and are not explained by background factors, socialization experiences, or family obligations. The same patterns persist for first-authored publications for African American and Latinx students, but not white women, suggesting potentially differential mechanisms of exclusion. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Guided by theories of socialization and possible selves, this study examines how STEM doctoral students perceive their academic and professional trajectories. More specifically, we rely on four years of interview data from 66 doctoral students in the biological sciences to explore students' perceived trajectories, focusing on the salient identities and experiences that shape the way students identify and describe their graduate experiences over time. Findings reveal wide variation in terms of how students described their trajectories, with some students describing linear trajectories and/or unchanging career interests, while others described their developmental trajectories as highly turbulent and non-linear. These perceived trajectories were largely shaped by student-advisor interactions, the value students placed on becoming independent scientists, and the privilege students brought with them to their graduate programs.