Effects of COVID-19 on Graduate Students in Engineering

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Ten
  In Roundtable Session: Postsecondary Students in Computing and Engineering Education (Table 7)

Abstract

Building on a small body of mostly questionnaire research in 2020 about stresses of COVID-19 on graduate students, we interviewed 55 PhD engineering students 4 times in 2021-2022. Coding for various COVID-19 related stressors suggested a similar set of stressors as found across the whole set of 2020 papers, but with more prominent worry for self, family, and friends, perhaps due to the Omicron surge in January 2022. A nexus of visa/travel/family/quarantine stressors was found in our more-highly-international sample, who had been separated from family for longer. Concerns about getting research done waned and waxed as conditions on campus changed. Similar to undergraduates, these students missed social interactions, and relied greatly on family for coping.

Authors

• Jennifer G. Cromley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Karin J. Jensen, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author

• Joseph F Mirabelli, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Non-Presenting Author

• Anne M Hart, University of Tennessee
  Non-Presenting Author

• Dale Robbennolt, University of Texas Austin
  Non-Presenting Author