Exploring the Impact of the McNair Scholars Program on Transition Into Engineering Doctoral Education

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

Abstract

According to the most recent reports, the ten-year engineering doctoral completion rates for men and women are 65% and 56%, respectively, with numbers even lower for underrepresented groups, with some estimates reporting rates as low as 43% for Black students. Given these considerable attrition rates, recent engineering education scholarship has examined the mechanisms governing doctoral attrition and students' decision-making process as they consider departure. However, the mechanisms that contribute to attrition are not equal and opposite to those that govern persistence, necessitating further research. A key component to promoting doctoral persistence is understanding how students navigate making the transition into graduate education and socialize in their new environment. Graduate socialization is how new student learns, adopts, and applies the norms and values of their lab, department, and institution and take ownership of their new professional identities. The degree to which students successfully integrate into their lab and departmental culture corresponds with their likelihood of completing their degree. Recent decades have seen the emergence of programs that assist students in making this transition into graduate education.
One such program is the McNair Scholars Program, a federal TRIO initiative administered by the Department of Education. The purpose of the program is to diversify the profile of the national professoriate by providing graduate preparatory services to undergraduate students who are members of groups traditionally underrepresented in higher education. McNair classifies students who are first-generation low-income, Black, Latinx, Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, and women in STEM fields as underrepresented. There are 187 universities around the country with actively funded McNair programs. Typically, McNair programs provide their students with graduate admissions counselling, financial aid counselling, and career advising. While programs vary widely in their offerings, all programs require their students to complete a summer research internship under the guidance of a faculty advisor from their institution.
Quantitative studies examining the program indicate that McNair alumni obtain doctoral degrees at six times the rate of their demographically similar peers, suggesting that the program effectively supported their transition into graduate education. However, relatively few studies have used rigorous qualitative research methods to characterize the program's impact on a national sample of graduate students, let alone in an engineering context.
In this work, we characterize the variety and types of McNair Scholars Programs to identify the specific practices which best support socialization and transition into graduate education. The most impactful aspect of the McNair program is the research internship with dedicated faculty. However, internships are time intensive for students and faculty, limiting the reproducibility of the program for additional populations. Admissions counselling and career advising provide significant support for students beginning their programs. As students transition into graduate school, ongoing support and mentorship from networks developed through McNair provide students with additional guidance unavailable to their non-McNair peers. Finally, engineering programs may find enacting early development of a multiple-mentor system effective in retaining students to degree completion. Our findings provide recommendations regarding how this multiple-mentor system can be utilized to better support students.

Author

• Kanembe Shanachilubwa, Pennsylvania State University
  Presenting Author