Graduate students rely heavily on their advisors, but mismatched working styles can lead to difficulties that persist throughout the PhD journey. The graduate-advisor relationship in engineering is particularly close, with the advisor acting as research supervisor and co-author in addition to dissertation chair. Strained relationships can worsen over time and be one of the most disheartening parts of graduate education. Predicting failure before it happens is therefore desirable.
This study proposes using a general systems theory of marriage to predict the success of graduate-advisor relationships in engineering. The study will employ a mixed methods grounded theory design and survey approximately 300 pairs of advisors and graduate students, followed by a mock advising session that will be video recorded and analyzed using the Specific Affect (SPAFF) Coding System. The proposed project seeks to improve graduate retention and degree completion efforts, and create an open educational resource for doctoral advisors and students that contains best practices informed by the results.
This project is currently under consideration for funding.
This project is in collaboration with the following institutions:
