Matthew Bahnson
University of Cincinnati, OH·Education Research
About half of engineering graduate students leave before finishing their degrees. Common reasons include conflict with advisors or peers, money or academic trouble, family concerns and attractive industry jobs.
- Fields
Education Research
Engineering
Social Science
- Topics
engineering education
graduate education
doctoral students
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2027
What they work on
- Measure how often engineering doctoral students change research labs and identify predictors and career outcomes, using a new longitudinal survey.
- Describe the lived experience of changing labs or universities through interviews with doctoral engineering students planning, undergoing or recently completing a change.
- Combine longitudinal survey and interview data into timelines for mixed-methods analysis of the lab-change process, then develop guidelines for department lab-change policies.
More about the research
Some who leave would rather have stayed. Switching to a new research lab, advisor, program or university is one way doctoral students resolve serious problems, but it is costly and poorly supported. In a preliminary survey, 60% of engineering doctoral students had seriously considered or made such a change.
Why it matters
Engineering departments could use these findings to write policies that make changing labs a real option instead of a reason to quit. This could help retain trained doctoral students, especially those from underrepresented groups who leave at higher rates, and strengthen the engineering workforce. The methods may also apply to graduate programs across STEM.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Matthew Wolfgram
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Education Research
Identify factors that help or hinder STEM persistence among Hmong American students at Wisconsin universities, using a survey and repeated interviews over time.
Maura Borrego
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Education Research
Extract the skills employers want from engineering master's degree holders by applying natural language processing (NLP), including generative AI, to more than a decade of engineering job postings.
Lance Perez
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, NE·Education Research
Identify the rural assets and structural barriers that shape engineering awareness before college, through site visits and semi-structured interviews with principals, counselors and STEM teachers at rural Nebraska high schools.
The school
University of Cincinnati: 18 labs on PI Pages, $740M a year on research, 275 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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