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Understanding perspectives of graduate students throughout their developmental journey is at the core of preparing future faculty, and it can inform critical choices of graduate faculty members and program developers. This study investigated the most memorable and influential factors that both promote and thwart graduate students' success, across the graduate journey. We collected and analyzed participants' reflective, personal Most Significant Incident narratives. Online questionnaires were completed by 1,480 graduate students in a US research university. Two independent researchers thematically analyzed the data, for the whole-group and several subgroups. Findings demonstrated commonalities and notable differences between Masters and doctoral students, and between students at different points-in-progress toward degree completion. These findings illuminate processes and factors that can inform departmental and institutional policy and services for graduate students.
GRADUATE STUDENTS' PROFILE and needs are shifting, due to myriad factors including technological and social change, and their most critical needs can be understood through listening to their voices. Understanding these needs is critical to inform graduate faculty members' work, and since graduate students teach foundational undergraduate courses-and go on to fill faculty ranks-it profoundly impacts undergraduate education as well (Austin, Campa, Pfund, Gillian-Daniel, Mathieu & Stoddart, 2009). Faculty members and program administrators need research that enables them to respond to students' real and relevant needs, throughout the entire graduate college experience. This study investigated the most memorable and influential factors that support and thwart students' success, across the graduate experience, through students' own reflective personal narratives.
Background
More than 2.8 million people are enrolled in US graduate programs annually (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2013). Yet relatively little systematic research addresses issues that inform those who teach, train, mentor, manage, and make policy to support graduate students (Nesheim, Guentzel, Gansemer-Topf, Ross, & Turrentine, 2006). Graduate colleges and programs face challenges in recruiting, retention, and accountability that require them to know students and their needs better, and understand this information in ways they can use (Stecher & Kirby, 2004). Recent financial constraints on both graduate colleges and students exacerbate these challenges; less aid is available to support full-time graduate study, and more students have to balance school, jobs and family responsibilities that create tension and external sources of conflict with academic motivation and success.
The college and university...