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Doctoral Dissertations
Date of Award
8-2023
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Major
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Major Professor
Elisabeth E. Schussler
Committee Members
Courtney J. Faber, Nina H. Fefferman, Joshua M. Rosenberg, Elizabeth P. Derryberry
Abstract
Given that attrition rates for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) graduate programs have been higher than 50% for more than a decade, increasing student success in graduate programs has long been a focus of research in higher education. However, previous research has paid little attention to the opinions and experiences of graduate students themselves. Graduate students’ lived experiences may be critical to understanding factors driving graduate attrition and to improving STEM graduate programs broadly. This dissertation explored two understudied aspects of the graduate student experience: students’ definitions of success and their use of resources.
I used interviews and surveys of graduate students to provide evidence that 1) life science graduate students have diverse definitions of success that include many different components, like happiness, achieving goals, and resilience. 2) Life science graduate students used many different resources, and differences in resource use and resource perception were associated with demographic factors, such as race and year in program. For example, nonwhite students reported using institutionally provided resources significantly more often than white students. 3) Life science graduate students’ perception of resource value was driven primarily by the type of help they expect to receive from a resource, and the suite of highly valuable resources identified by graduate students is not aligned with current discussions of resources in the literature. Overall, results from my dissertation indicate that life science graduate students’ experiences are critically underreported in the literature, from their definitions and experiences related to success, to the resources they use and why they use them, highlighting the critical need to add these voices to the literature.
Results from this dissertation will be useful for students, advisors, researchers, and institutional leaders. These results may be used to inform policy and mentoring decisions and future research into how graduate students may leverage resources to achieve success, however they define it.
Recommended Citation
Weatherton, Maryrose, "Resource Use and Success in Life Science Graduate Education. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2023.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/8689