Advisors, Peers, and Counterspaces: The Socialization of Minoritized Doctoral Engineering Students

Socialization is critical to doctoral student success. However, many examinations of students’ socialization often compartmentalize attributes such as faculty interactions, peers, and research groups, leading to an incomplete understanding. Moreover, much of the current research is conducted from a deficit perspective, identifying only problematic approaches to socialization. To promote positive approaches to socialization, we need a comprehensive and integrated examination of what is working for successful doctoral students. Hence, this article explores the overall socialization experiences of minoritized doctoral students in their dissertation phases. We address the following research questions: How do minoritized students navigate their socialization into the engineering PhD? And how do the different socialization spaces in their doctoral experience interplay with each other to help them persist? Using graduate student socialization theory, this qualitative study examines the experiences of 44 engineering students across the United States during the final stages of their doctoral degree. We find that their socialization occurred in four main spaces and that these spaces were not something that simply happened to students but that they actively sought, nurtured, and optimized by selecting interactions that worked for them. Our findings showcase how minoritized doctoral engineering students persist and describe the importance of campus counterspaces in the doctoral student experience. We conclude with recommendations for research and practice.