Nicholas R. Stroup, Incoming Assistant Professor, at Ohio University.
To borrow an admissions essay trope, I need to tell you what it is like to write this piece you are reading. I am typing this in a small regional airport, taking a self-funded professional development trip between the end of graduate school and the start of a faculty position. The packet of COBRA health care information arrived just before I left today, and I have been trying to understand how it will work in tandem with the Affordable Care Act and Medicare benefits in my current state of residence and the state where I will soon move. I have a doctorate, have work experience in human resources, and yet this process still feels quite complex. It is clear I am about to rack up more debt from health insurance, moving, and other surprise expenses in these summer months than I did during my entire PhD program.
I share this because it is not entirely unexpected. While my trajectory may not be representative of most winding student-to-faculty paths, I had anticipated this summer employment gap would be tough based on Twitter discourse, advice from my program faculty, and stories whispered from PhD program alumni who are now professors. However, even when something is known to be difficult, the severity might not be felt until the situation unfolds. Such is the case for me now in the airport, and for many other early career scholars navigating academic life. Transitioning from anticipating a difficult graduate journey to facing the hardships of graduate school is the case for plenty of students. Popular discourse and academic scholarship (e.g., Posselt, 2018) contain many indications that graduate school is tough; the totality of these lived experiences serves as a reminder that scholarly work on graduate student socialization now seems more important than ever.
During my time as a graduate student affairs administrator, research on graduate education helped me to do my work with intention. I often used best practices shared through various ACPA commissions and the Council of Graduate Schools resource portals to build and refine orientation and professional development programs, provide developmental academic advising, and support graduate students and their faculty in navigating academic and co-curricular concerns. Yet after six years as a staff member, I realized that systemic changes to the world of graduate education needed to spring specifically from faculty at universities. Students coming to my office for advising faced unexpected pressures to persist in educational pursuits (e.g., financial, familial), and a barrage of surprise academic obstacles to reaching their goals (e.g., expectations to travel, changes in funding eligibility, course scheduling impasses). I could do little to help them without the agency that my faculty colleagues possessed. In many cases, my faculty colleagues (outside of an education discipline) simply did not understand the lived experiences of the graduate students in their classrooms and research teams. The only way I could make inroads was through scholarship about graduate student experiences. Thus, having become a researcher of graduate student socialization and poised to begin a faculty career, I recognized the importance of developing nuanced understandings about graduate and professional education more than ever.
I have spent most of the past decade considering various ways to describe socialization, since it is a powerful lens for understanding graduate education. However, the term holds different meanings for different people. Socialization summons an idea of meaningful ongoing social interaction, yet to bring it usefully to practice requires sensitivity to the low consensus around how different scholars understand its influences and effects. Drawing from many scholars’ work on the topic, I find myself explaining that graduate student socialization describes the role acquisition process that graduate students engage in, where they are shaped by their academic departments and countless other influences, while simultaneously reshaping their programs due to their ongoing interactions with higher education systems (Antony & Schaps, 2020; Austin, 2002; Bess, 1978; Brim, 1966; Gardner & Mendoza, 2010; Gopaul, 2016; Tierney, 1997; Weidman & DeAngelo, 2020). An important lesson about graduate student socialization is that faculty need to support graduate students beyond classes and meetings. Faculty must demonstrate both competence and care pertaining to the non-academic issues that are part of the graduate student experience, and heed the influence of students whose experiences outside the institution inherently affect the learning and research that happens within it. How faculty engage in supportive practices has great power to shape academia for decades to come.
As an example, in discussing graduate student socialization with faculty outside education disciplines, I might discuss the various experiences that a PhD student who is a parent might have across coursework and research that—in concert with their caregiving responsibilities—influences their decision to remain engaged in the program or field of study. That student will learn a good deal about becoming a scholar based on how the faculty in their program manages their own caregiving responsibilities (if any), espouse values about holistic student support, engage in parent-friendly pedagogical practices, or require research engagement during certain times of day or night. These patterned interactions influence how that student decides to make choices within and beyond their program. At the same time, that student influences the culture of their program through sharing (or not sharing) personal experiences of alignment (or misalignment) with peers in their program, the higher education community and beyond. A formal or informal mechanism that helps the student to connect with other graduate students, alumni, and faculty who are parents would be a powerful form of graduate student socialization.
Thus, as I prepare to embark on this summer work trip that exemplifies a personal investment in higher education, I reflect on how I carry understandings of decades of research about socialization – particularly graduate socialization – related to role expectations. This includes my expectations for and others’ expectations of that role. My expectations for becoming a professor of higher education sit squarely in my desire and hope to connect theory and practice with students. I will teach current and future scholar-practitioners how to go about their work in higher education with intention and criticality. The expectations of my new faculty role relate to supporting formal postsecondary education programs and serving the various stakeholders involved in academic labor. Understanding these expectations has been my socialization to the field, and demystifying the academy for myself has forced me to repeatedly ask the question: can the expectations of and expectations for ever align? The answer I have settled on is “well, sometimes,” so long as supporting students is at the forefront of this work. For me, finding generative ways to continue to support graduate students through socialization research represents my hope for higher education, and is good enough reason for getting on this airplane.References
Antony, J. S., & Schaps, T. L. (2021). The more things change, the more they stay the same: The persistence, and impact, of the congruence and assimilation orientation in doctoral student socialization and professional development. Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, 36, 383–417. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44007-7_9
Austin, A. E. (2002). Preparing the next generation of faculty: Graduate school as socialization to the academic career. The Journal of Higher Education, 73(1), 94-122. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jhe.2002.0001
Bess, J. L. (1978). Anticipatory socialization of graduate students. Research in Higher Education, 8(4), 289–317. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00976801
Brim, O. G. (1966). Socialization through the life cycle. In O. G. Brim, Jr. and S. Wheelter (eds.), Socialization after childhood: Two essays (pp 1-49). Wiley.
Gardner, S. K., & Mendoza, P. (Eds.). (2010). On becoming a scholar: Socialization and development in doctoral education. Stylus.
Gopaul, B. (2016). Applying cultural capital and field to doctoral student socialization. International Journal for Researcher Development, 7(1), 46-62. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJRD-03-2015-0009
Posselt, J. (2018). Normalizing struggle: Dimensions of faculty support for doctoral students and implications for persistence and well-being. The Journal of Higher Education, 89(6), 988-1013. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2018.1449080
Tierney, W. G. (1997). Organizational socialization in higher education. The Journal of Higher Education, 68(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.2307/2959934
Weidman, J. C., & DeAngelo, L. (2020). Toward a 21st century socialization model of higher education’s impact on students. In J. C. Weidman & L. DeAngelo (Eds.), Socialization in higher education and the early career: Theory, research and application (pp. 311-323). Springer.
About the Author
Nicholas R. Stroup is an incoming Assistant Professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs at Ohio University. He holds a Ph.D. in Educational Policy and Leadership Studies from the University of Iowa. Prior to doctoral study, he worked in student affairs administrative roles, primarily supporting graduate and professional academic programs. Dr. Stroup's research centers on graduate and professional education, international higher education, and contemporary theories of socialization.
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