Shifting the existing lens of mentorship in graduate education to one that frames graduate students as mentors, rather than mentees, I explore how 10 STEMM doctoral student mentors considered social identities and organizational power structures in mentoring undergraduates. Using sociospatial and in-depth interview data, findings illuminate how…

One of the central goals of doctoral programs is to develop independent researchers and scholars who will lead the next generation of knowledge production. Despite extant evidence of inequalities in doctoral education, few studies have closely examined the experiences of first-generation college students who pursue a Ph.D. We examine how…

In the laboratory-based disciplines, selection of a principal investigator (PI) and research laboratory (lab) indelibly shapes doctoral students' experiences and educational outcomes. Framed by the theoretical concept of person-environment fit from within a socialization model, we use an inductive, qualitative approach to explore how a sample of…

Guided by theories of socialization and possible selves, this study examines how STEM doctoral students perceive their academic and professional trajectories. More specifically, we rely on four years of interview data from 66 doctoral students in the biological sciences to explore students' perceived trajectories, focusing on the salient…

Building on literature addressing doctoral student socialization and scientific research groups, we qualitatively explore the gendered nature of laboratory rotations for 54 women pursuing STEM doctorates. Using in-depth interviews and a feminist phenomenological approach, findings highlight how women (re)constructed strategies to select lab…