CAREER: Uncovering Faculty Beliefs and Values to Define a Model of Doctoral Education in Chemistry

About This Grant

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of early-career faculty who can serve as academic role models in research and education and lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Chemists have played a significant role in solving some of the world's greatest issues and improving the quality of life for all people. Often, this requires that chemists be trained with advanced skills and knowledge only achievable through the completion of a doctoral degree program (Ph.D.). Significant concerns have been raised both inside and out of the chemistry community related to the ability of American chemistry doctoral programs to prepare their students effectively for future careers and scientific endeavors. These shortcomings in doctoral training indicate that the current system is training chemists whose preparation to tackle the world's next grand challenges could be improved. As such, this project will investigate the training of doctoral chemistry students from the faculty perspective to complement existing research that describes student perspectives. The elements used to progress a student from beginning to end of the Ph.D. program are well-known and homogeneous. This project will unearth the specific rationale for how these elements are supposed to develop an independent scientist and identify the specific roles faculty advisors play. Additionally, funding for this project will be used to prompt significant reforms in the graduate programs in five chemistry departments. It is expected that all chemistry graduate programs will gain access to resources that guide potential reforms through this project. These reforms are expected to improve the quality of scientists produced by chemistry doctoral programs for the betterment of society. Three objectives guide this project. The first will build a model that describes how the Ph.D. student develops into an independent scientist based on faculty advisors' stated goals and learning outcomes. Chemistry faculty will be interviewed to discover each core element's role(s) in a typical chemistry doctoral program. From thematic analyses, a model of doctoral education will be constructed and modified/validated by chemistry faculty. Activities in Objective 2 will discover the chemistry faculty's specific values and beliefs pertaining to the training of doctoral chemistry students. This important research will reveal the faculty advisors' goals, roles, and identities and how they affect the training chemistry doctoral students receive. These beliefs are expected to be heavily influential in the practices that are observed in doctoral education. Finally, Objective 3 will develop resources that outline the primary issues with current Ph.D. training and what reforms have been suggested to mitigate them. These resources will be distributed to all chemistry graduate programs across the country. Additionally, the PI will work closely with five specific chemistry departments with the explicit aim of achieving tangible reform in how each trains chemistry doctoral students. This attempt to engage in specific reform aims to produce a generation of chemists that are more prepared for the challenges they will face in their careers. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.