Characterizing the Socialization of STEM Graduate Students Using the Context of the McNair Scholars Program

Background: Despite the increase in studies examining STEM doctoral student persistence and attrition, there is still an incomplete understanding of the factors contributing to a student’s successful transition into and through graduate education. As STEM programs seek to become more diverse and inclusive, understanding how to support students best as they consider graduate education is imperative. One of the most successful federal programs in preparing and graduating PhD students in STEM disciplines has been the McNair Scholars Program; however, while its quantitative success has been documented, relatively little qualitative research has been done to understand the benefits conferred to students who went through the program. As such, the McNair Program constitutes the ideal proxy to examine how intentional schema development can impact graduate student socialization.

Purpose/Hypothesis: This article aims to characterize STEM graduate student socialization using the McNair Scholars Program, a federally funded TRIO program, as the context of the study. Schema Theory and Bourdieu’s theory of social capital provided conceptual models to understand how and why these students developed strategies for success.

Design/Method: Data was collected in a qualitative research design through semi-structured interviews with N = 13 participants. A thematic analysis was conducted on the data using an emergent coding schema informed by schema theory and social capital theory.

Results: Our findings uncovered five themes related to how the presence, absence, or development of five different forms of capital: technical, cultural, economic, social, and intrapersonal impacted the experiences of the graduate students interviewed.

Conclusions: Development of the five forms of capital and the cultivation of individual habitus is critical for the preparation of students for graduate education particularly for first-generation low-income and underrepresented students.