Expecting Isolation and Independence, Experiencing Collaboration: Black Males' Transitions to Graduate School

• In Event: Change Is Hard: Transitions Into and Through Engineering Graduate Education

Abstract

According to existing research, approximately 50% of graduate students do not complete their degrees. Do they depart because they could not do the work? Or were there other experiences during their transitions that facilitated their exit? Equally perplexing, what are students’ expectations upon transitioning into graduate school? To what extent do their expectations and assumptions guide their realities? The answers to these questions about graduate education, broadly – and about science and engineering fields, specifically – remain unclear.
Although limited literature on graduate education highlights the supports and guidance that are important for students’ progress, this research rarely, if ever, examines Black male graduate students. Given the limited number of Black men moving to and through undergraduate studies, and the even smaller number at the graduate level, it is crucial to explore the experiences had by Black male graduate students that help to facilitate their transitions into and progress through graduate studies. The findings from this study explore their expectations for and lived realities as they transitioned into graduate school and offer new insights into graduate socialization, necessary for both students and the stakeholders responsible for ensuring that graduate students successfully progress toward degree completion.
In this study, Twale et al.’s (2016) framework informs our understandings of Black male graduate students’ anticipatory expectations of graduate school. We then compare their expectations with their lived realities. The following research question guides our study: How do Black males in engineering describe their expectations for and the realities of transitioning into graduate school?
To gain a better understanding of students’ shared experiences related to their expectations of and lived realities during their transitions to graduate school, a phenomenological qualitative research design was used. Phenomenology aims to describe the essence of a phenomenon (e.g., transitioning into graduate school) commonly shared between individuals. To address our research question, semi-structured interviews (i.e., one-on-one, focus groups) were conducted with 50 Black men in engineering graduate programs across six very high research activity universities.
Our findings illuminate students’ expectations and lived realities of transitioning to graduate school. Specifically, the data resulted in two themes and seven subthemes. The findings about students’ expectations primarily highlight their assumptions around encountering isolation and navigating independence in graduate school: 1) negative expectations of navigating graduate school independently and alone; 2) positive expectations of having autonomy over of one’s work; 3) expectations of immediately producing successful research; and, 4) expectations of taking complete responsibility for one’s scholarly progress. In contrast, the findings about students’ lived realities show that their scholarly development was actualized through their navigation of collaborations with peers: 1) coursework collaborations as a realistic practice of graduate school socialization; 2) research collaborations as a realistic social location of scholarly development in graduate school; and, 3) peer study group collaborations as a realistic facilitator of successful transitions.
A prevailing new narrative in graduate education should highlight interactive collaborations as necessary to individual achievements or graduate education will continue to wrestle with the dissonance between students’ expectations and their lived realities.

Authors

• Brian A. Burt, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Joshua Wallace, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Non-Presenting Author

• Blayne D. Stone, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tiaira Porter, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Non-Presenting Author

• Devin Henry, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Non-Presenting Author

• Emily Esquivel
  Non-Presenting Author