A Qualitative Examination of Graduate Advising Relationships:The Advisee Perspective

Sixteen 3rd-year counseling psychology doctoral students were interviewed about their relationships with their graduate advisors. Of those students, 10 were satisfied and 6 were unsatisfied with their advising relationships. Satisfied and unsatisfied students differed on several aspects of the advising relationship, including (a) the ability to choose their advisors, (b) the frequency of meetings with their advisors, (c) the benefits and costs associated with their advising relationships, and (d) how conflict was dealt with in the advising relationship. Furthermore, all of the satisfied students reported that their advising relationships became more positive over time, whereas many of the unsatisfied students reported that their advising relationships got worse (e.g., became more distant) over time

A Qualitative Examination of Graduate Advising Relationships: The Advisor Perspective

Nineteen counseling psychology faculty members were interviewed regarding their advising relationships with doctoral students. Advisors informally learned to advise from their experiences with their advisor and their advisees and defined their role as supporting and advocating for advisees as they navigated their doctoral program. Advisors identified personal satisfaction as a benefit and time demands as a cost of advising. Good advising relationships were facilitated by advisees’ positive personal or professional characteristics, mutual respect, open communication, similarity in career path between advisor and advisee, and lack of conflict. Difficult relationships were affected by advisees’ negative personal or professional characteristics, lack of respect, research struggles, communication problems, advisors feeling ineffective working with advisees, disruption or rupture of the relationship, and conflict avoidance. Implications for research and training are discussed

International Advisees\u27 Perspectives on the Advising Relationship in Counseling Psychology Doctoral Programs

Ten international students in U.S.-based counseling psychology doctoral programs were interviewed regarding their experiences as doctoral students, especially their advising relationship. Data were analyzed using consensual qualitative research (CQR). Participants reported more challenges than benefits of being international students, and more often described their doctoral programs as not culturally receptive than receptive to international students. Despite this assessment of the overall doctoral program, they described their own advising relationships as predominantly positive. Many international students discussed with their advisor their difficulties adjusting to a new environment and being away from home, and identified unique personal and professional needs as international students. Participants recommended that international students openly communicate with and seek a good relationship with their advisors, and also recommended that advisors of international students seek to understand and attend to international students\u27 culture and the challenges of being an international student. Implications for training and research are addressed

Impact-Oriented Contextual Scholar Profiling using Self-Citation Graphs

Quantitatively profiling a scholar's scientific impact is important to modern research society. Current practices with bibliometric indicators (e.g., h-index), lists, and networks perform well at scholar ranking, but do not provide structured context for scholar-centric, analytical tasks such as profile reasoning and understanding. This work presents GeneticFlow (GF), a suite of novel graph-based scholar profiles that fulfill three essential requirements: structured-context, scholar-centric, and evolution-rich. We propose a framework to compute GF over large-scale academic data sources with millions of scholars. The framework encompasses a new unsupervised advisor-advisee detection algorithm, a well-engineered citation type classifier using interpretable features, and a fine-tuned graph neural network (GNN) model. Evaluations are conducted on the real-world task of scientific award inference. Experiment outcomes show that the F1 score of best GF profile significantly outperforms alternative methods of impact indicators and bibliometric networks in all the 6 computer science fields considered. Moreover, the core GF profiles, with 63.6%-66.5% nodes and 12.5%-29.9% edges of the full profile, still significantly outrun existing methods in 5 out of 6 fields studied. Visualization of GF profiling result also reveals human explainable patterns for high-impact scholars

Creating Spaces for Justice-Oriented Research: Critical Reflections of a Researcher/Teacher and Her Advisor

This article explores the critical reflections of a doctoral candidate and her advisor on the design and implementation of the candidate’s study, how space was created for such scholarship, and the challenges and catalysts for successfully navigating and shifting trenchant epistemological and methodological positions. Adopting an autoethnographic stance, we examine our navigation of the conceptual, structural and interpersonal tensions of doing critical research in a mainstream institution. The results highlight our experiences in a) re-conceptualizing the purpose of research by moving beyond doing “hit-and-run” research to research as praxis in marginalized communities, b) re-conceptualizing data gathering and analysis as justice-oriented rather than as “methodolatry” and c) understanding reflexively the tensions caused in the final stages of the dissertation as the novice advisor privileged a product-orientation over a person-orientation in her mentoring stance. This study underscores the importance of ensuring that humanizing pedagogy is employed consistently and unambiguously through the doctoral advising process.  Keywords: doctoral advising, justice-oriented research, critical doctoral research, critical reflection, critical pedagogy/advisin

Exploring Organizational Communication (Micro) History Through Network Connections

In light of the 100th anniversary of the National Communication Association, the following essay offers an initial look at the communication subdiscipline of organizational communication and its development over the past seven-plus decades. As part of this review, we advocate the use of network methods as a microhistory analytic tool to explore the vast number of connections, both between people and research interests, generated as the discipline developed from its humble beginnings. This work represents a small sample of the greater Organizational Communication Genealogy Project. This larger effort seeks to create a detailed review of the discipline as it explores the relationships between advisors and advisees, the development of dissertation and current research topics, the collaborative network of coauthorship, and the contributions of individual scholars through the analysis of interview data, narratives, and historical documents

Exploring Taiwanese EFL Graduate Students Learning Academic Writing

Much has been done to explore the successful tips for scholarly publication in higher education, and has revealed the challenges facing periphery scholars; few studies, however, discussed the enculturation of learning how to write their theses in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts from graduate students’ standpoints. This study aims to bridge the gaps in the extant literature on academic writing and yield insights into how research space is created by graduate students from the perspective of community of practice (CoP). In particular, this paper addressed what graduate students might encounter in terms of graduate students’ beliefs and attitudes toward academic writing and their multidimensional engagement in the academic community. Four graduate students were involved in the study via homogeneous sampling from four universities in Taiwan. To obtain rich data, semi-structured interviews were adopted, audio-recorded, transcribed, and re-constructed. The results highlighted graduate students’ needs for systematic training of research paper writing. The participants believe that they may benefit more from thorough academic training, whereas they found their academic writing training and writing proficiency insufficient. This study concludes with pedagogical implications for rigorous course design and training for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) writing professionals to improve the quality of EFL academic writing

Racial Battle Fatigue and Graduate Student Roles: The Experiences of Black/African American, Biracial Black, and Multiracial Black Identified Students

Black students continue to endure racialized experiences in their pursuit of higher learning. Students’ educational experiences, especially at historically White institutions, are plagued by incidents of racial microaggressions and racial stress, which in turn result in students’ experiences of racial battle fatigue (RBF; e.g., Smith, Hung, & Franklin, 2011), which is the everyday psychophysiological effects associated with racial/ethnic minorities’ experiences as they fight racial microaggressions (e.g., Smith, Allen, & Danley, 2007). RBF has been linked to decreased academic performance and poor physical and mental health outcomes (e.g., Franklin-Jackson & Carter, 2007; Hotchkins, 2016; Smith et al., 2007) among Blacks, especially men (Smith et al., 2011). The aims of this dissertation were to use a quantitative descriptive, non-experimental design and collect data with Black graduate students (BGSs) in clinical and counseling programs to (a) identify their RBF experiences as students in class, advisees, and supervisees and (b) identify differences in RBF experiences across key demographic characteristics. Self-report data were collected via online survey from 69 gender diverse, clinical and counseling graduate students, enrolled at colleges and universities across the United States, and who self-identified as Black/African American, Biracial Black, or Multiracial Black. One-way, within-subjects analysis of variance results showed that (a) BGSs’ psychological, physiological, and behavioral stress responses in their role as students in class were most impacted by racial microaggressions as compared to their roles as advisees and supervisees and (b) BGSs’ overall RBF in their role as students in class was most impacted by racial microaggressions as compared to their roles as advisees and supervisees; and (c) experiences of RBF for BGSs in clinical and counseling training programs varied by key demographic variables and roles. Findings suggest that there is a relationship between racial microaggressions and stress responses for gender diverse, BGSs in clinical and counseling programs and that this relationship varies, in part, by BGSs’ roles as students in class, advisees, and supervisees. Results suggest that role/context matter in the experiences of RBF for BGSs in clinical and counseling programs. The RBF framework has some utility for this student population. Study implications and future research directions are discussed

Handle with care: the significance of caring in academic advising

textThis qualitative study explores the nature of caring and its significance in college and university academic advising. Although care has often been mentioned in academic advising literature as a key component in the process, no effort has been made to define what is meant by “caring” or to describe what caring looks like or what it entails. The focus of this inquiry was to examine caring as expressed in the practices of professional advisors in their relationships with the undergraduate students they advise. Guided by Nel Noddings’s (1984) exploration of the ethic of care and its implications in the caring encounter, the work of ten professional academic advisors was examined to provide a rich description of the characteristics of caring advising. Constructivist-based research methodology utilized for this study included purposeful sampling, videotaped participant observation, and advisor and student interviews. Multiple data sources and collection methods established trustworthiness and ensured the rigor of the study. Constant comparative analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) was used to identify patterns, code data, and categorize findings. Respondents’ voices are expressed through rich, descriptive vignettes to reveal the qualities and characteristics that define the important role caring plays in academic advising. The findings indicated that caring is enacted in the meaningful relationships professional advisors build and sustain with students. Findings also revealed that caring advisors practice maternalism and mentorship in their work with students and also balance power in these significant relationships. Caring advising is characterized by an advisor’s preparation for the encounter, and his or her commitment to trust, sincerity, accuracy, and knowledge. Caring cannot be achieved by formula and is, at times, inconsistently present in advising practice. The conclusions indicate that the caring relationship between an advisor and his or her students greatly enhances students’ educational experiences. This study will make a significant contribution to the academic advising profession as well as scholarship in the field. By studying experienced caring advisors, the existing theory of the ethic of care is enhanced to offer a better understanding of the impact caring has in advising practices.Educational Administratio