Research
The research component investigates the attitudes and assumptions of students and advisors with regard to pursuit of faculty positions at non-R1 institutions. This research will provide information about career goals of STEM Ph.D. students, as well as faculty values and norms regarding their students’ careers. It will also assess perceptions of faculty normative beliefs and their impact on primarily Hispanic, underrepresented Ph.D. students at UC campuses. Framed in terms of social norms theory (Miller & Prentice, 2016), the research will consider the possibility that graduate students may misperceive their graduate advisors’ values and norms regarding career choices. If this is the case, the effectiveness of norm correction interventions will be tested to align the values of faculty and graduate students.
Our research project will provide faculty, administrators, and the research community with new evidence about student and faculty norms that may facilitate or inhibit doctoral students like those at UC campuses from pursuing the full range of professorial careers available to them. This evidence will help faculty become more aware of the range of graduate student’s career aspirations and how these might differ for students from underrepresented groups.
The specific aims of the research project are as follows:
Identify graduate students’ career goals and the perceived norms that graduate students believe their faculty advisors hold about career options, as well as students’ feelings of belonging and social support within graduate school.
Identify faculty members’ actual beliefs and behaviors towards graduate students in terms of what careers graduate students should pursue(the injunctive norms of faculty), as well as their actual support for different careers (the descriptive norms of faculty). This will enable us to assess the accuracy of graduate students’ perceived normative beliefs of faculty members in general.
Examine whether graduate students systematically misperceive the beliefs of faculty and, if so, conduct an experiment to test whether correcting potential normative misperceptions increases feelings of belonging within academia. The results of the graduate student and faculty surveys will also be used to educate graduate students and faculty about normative misperceptions we identify.
Society for Personal and Social Psychology (SPSP) Annual Conference
Lauren Otrosky, PhD graduate student at UC Santa Barbara, presents poster on findings from the first round of research, focusing on student career goals and perceptions of their advisor's expectations for them, then exploring the impact that a disconnect between the two had on their feelings of belonging in graduate school. (Feb. 27 2020)
Recent Publications
and Presentations
Duenas, Maria D. and Crowell, Amber (in press). “Teaching Racial Discourses: Disrupting Oppressive Discourses with Research Methods and Active Learning” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.
Leong, S., Hegarty, M., & Sherman, D. K. (accepted). “I support your (non)academic career pursuits”: The impact of communicating norms about advisors’ support for varied career options on STEM PhD students’ career development. AGEP 2022 Annual Conference, Corpus Christi, TX, November 2022.
Leong, S., Hegarty, M., & Sherman, D. K. (2022, February). “I support your (non)academic career pursuits”: The impact of communicating norms about advisor’s support for varied career options on STEM PhD students’ career development. Poster presented at the 2022 Society for Personality and Social Psychology Intervention Science Preconference.
Mendoza, M. & Flores, C. (accepted). Co-teaching Using Writing-Intensive Assessment Practices in Undergraduate Ordinary Differential Equations and Exploring Cultural Congruence. AGEP 2022 Annual Conference, Corpus Christi, TX, November 2022.
Winek, A. C., Mendoza, S & Nash, C. M. (accepted). A Model of Pedagogy and Progress: A Case Study in Training Future STEM Faculty to Meet the Needs of Students from Underrepresented Minority Backgrounds. AGEP 2022 Annual Conference, Corpus Christi, TX, November 2022.
Flores, C. & Teranishi-Martinez, C. (accepted). Strengthening our HSI* Community through a Hybrid Faculty Mentoring NetworkAGEP 2022 Annual Conference, Corpus Christi, TX, November 2022.
Nash, C.M. et al. (March 2021).The AGEP California Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) Alliance: Toward sustainability and scalability. Poster presented at the National AGEP Research Meeting.
Ortosky, L., Leong, S. & Sherman, D.K. (March 2021). STEM PhD students' career preference & sense of belonging: Demographic similarities and differences. Poster presented at the National AGEP Research Meeting.
Sherman, D.K. & Ortosky, L. (March 2021). Transitioning to the professorate requires advisor-advisee coordination: A study of career preferences among STEM faculty for their PhD advisees. Poster presented at the National AGEP Research Meeting.
Marshall, J. (July, 2021). California HSI Alliance: Diversifying the Professoriate in STEM. Talk presented at the annual summer meeting of the Council of Graduate Schools.
More Publications:
Phylogeography within the Peromyscus maniculatus species group: Understanding past distribution of genetic diversity and areas of refugia in western North America. Society of the Study Evolution 2022 Meeting, 24–28 June 2022, Cleveland, OH. R. A. Boria and J. L. Blois.