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Abbreviations: (BSA) bovine serum albumin, (CNT)

Background:Little is known about how doctoral advising relationships form, but understanding the inception of these relationships can be helpful to address doctoral attrition. Chemical Engineering programs highly structure this advisor-advisee selection when compared to other engineering programs.Purpose: This study examines how two programs in Chemical Engineering practice the advisor-advisee selection process from the perspective of their faculty. In particular, our study uses principal-agent theory to address the following research question: How do two Chemical Engineering doctoral programs manage the advisor-advisee matching process? Methods: Through multi-case study methods, we examine faculty perceptions in two large doctoral programs in the U.S. Our coding was informed using Principal-Agent Theory as a framework to help characterize faculty perceptions and develop insight into their interactions with students and the graduate program director.Results: Our findings showed that faculty perceived control could strongly impact whether they adhere to departmental processes and adapt to the existing practices or if they circumvent the process. Our findings also showed the role of transparency and how such impacted faculty engagement. Conclusion:We recommend departments consider how they practice shared governance in their departments regarding the advisor-advisee matching process. We also recommend they continuously engage in conversations about processes and practices to surface implicit and explicit practices and perpetuate good community in their academic units. We also present recommendations for using economics frameworks in studying academic processes.

Although advising relationships are key for doctoral student success, little research has addressed how they form. Understanding the formation of advising relationships can help contextualize their later development and ultimately support a student’s decision to persist in the doctorate. To understand relationship formation, the purpose of this qualitative study is to identify and describe the types of advisor–advisee selection processes that exist in engineering, science, and math doctoral programs and examine patterns across disciplines within those fields. We conducted interviews with doctoral program directors and engaged in document analysis of graduate student handbooks from 55 doctoral programs in the aforementioned fields in high research institutions across the United States. Using principal–agent theory as a theoretical lens, our findings showed that engineering programs tend to decentralize the advisor selection process by funding students across different funding sources upon enrollment. Contrariwise, science and math programs tended to fund all students in a cohort from a common funding source, which allowed students to have more time to gather information, meet, and select an advisor. These findings also show important nuances when comparing graduate education in these programs that directly impact the doctoral student experience and reiterates the necessity to study these fields separately.