The growing concern of doctoral student persistence has increased exponentially in higher education over the past decade. The body of research presented in this dissertation examines the complex phenomenon of persistence and possible pathways to addressing the dilemma of deteriorating academic persistence for doctoral students. It explores and…

Background: Students who transfer from community colleges in pursuit of four-year degrees (i.e., upward transfer students) represent a diverse and talented group that is critical to advancing gender equity in STEM. However, research has not yet explored factors that promote Ph.D. aspirations among upward transfer computing students, resulting in…

A mentor can be of great importance to doctoral student success and progress. While many have studied student perceptions of the process, research regarding how doctoral faculty mentors interpret and enact mentoring practices is less evident. To address this empirical gap, a doctoral student mentor functions measure was created. The measure is…

Researchers interested in psychological factors affecting writers in higher-education institutions, or academic writers, are concerned with internal variables affecting writing productivity; however few empirical studies explore these factors with samples of students who are in the process of earning master's or doctoral degrees (i.e., graduate…

The perception of time (the use of temporal categories to conceptualize experiences) affects human behavior. Students' time perspective predicts academic outcomes: those with future orientations tend to have better academic outcomes than those with past or present, according to Zimbardo and Boyd's psychology of time model, and may contribute to…

We explore how race and gender shape graduate students' perceptions of their advisors. We find evidence that women of color and students in the biological/physical sciences report significantly less support than other groups. Our findings speak to the utility of the intersectionality framework for examining interpersonal relations in higher…

This study examines the motivations and career goals of geography graduate students and the extent they are prepared in transferable skills. Women and students specializing in geographic information science and technology are primarily motivated by career opportunities in the private sector, whereas doctoral students express a preference for…

This paper explores how social relationships between new accounting faculty members and their former dissertation chairs can influence the publishing productivity of the new faculty members in their early academic careers. The focus on social relationships offers a unique approach to studying the effectiveness doctoral education. Our findings show…

The facial neutrality of academic predictors (GPAs and Miller Analogy Test scores) are examined relative to admission decisions for applicants varying in national origin (i.e., African American, Asian, Hispanic and Whites), sex of applicants (females or males), and consistency of faculty decisions for a particular doctoral program in educational…

The intent of the present study was to examine the strength of the relationship between language proficiency in English and the 9 types of intelligences. As such, the objectives of this study were three-folded. The primary objective of the study was to investigate the relationship between multiple intelligences and language proficiency among the…