Recruit and Retain Strategically for PhD Programs
Extension Services (ES) recommends a strategic, sustainable approach to attracting and retaining women that focuses on revising educational systems to create an inclusive experience for all students, as opposed to changing students to fit into existing systems. Based on an extensive review of scholarship on graduate education, ES for Graduate Programs (ES-Grad) has developed a framework of six essential components that support recruiting and retaining students in doctoral computing programs: Evaluation, Admissions, Advisors, Social Ecosystems, Doctoral Lifecycle, and Policies and Accountability.
Explore each framework component, and find related NCWIT resources by clicking on the component title below.
Continuously Improve through Evaluation
Ongoing data collection, analyses, and reporting identify what is working and what is not, and inform decisions. Data includes:
- Recruiting, applications, offer letters, acceptances, and enrollment tracking;
- Advising and social climate experiences;
- Student progress toward meeting milestones;
- Event and intervention evaluation; and
- Interviews with students when they leave, with or without their degree.
Resources:
- Grad Experience and Climate Survey (Coming Soon) // Identify strengths and areas for improving your department’s efforts to retain graduate students.
- Evaluation Guide: What Data, and When to Collect It (Coming Soon) // Learn about what data to collect, and when, to guide your systemic change efforts.
- Evaluating a Mentoring Program Guide // Learn a step-by-step method (with example metrics) for evaluating a mentoring program in either industry or academia.
- How Does Combating Overt Sexism Affect Women’s Retention? // The social climate of your department can create a favorable or unfavorable environment for everyone. This resource can help you assess your department’s climate.
Learn about using this component in systemic change efforts here.
View systemic change resources here.
Actively Recruit and Cement Enrollments through Admissions Processes
Active recruitment is always ongoing, including at conferences which faculty attend. Faculty establish and use holistic review criteria, and share them with applicants and letter writers. Departments cement acceptances by making early, firm funding offers and by communicating regularly with applicants. Faculty and students help incoming students with relocation issues.
Resources:
- NCWIT Tips: 11 Ways to Design More Inclusive Academic Websites // Learn tips to help you create a website that welcomes diverse students and effectively promotes computing and your department.
- How Can REUs Help Retain Female Undergraduates? // Learn how REUs can lead to more graduate applications and stronger candidates.
- REU-in-a-Box: Expanding the Pool of Computing Researchers // Follow these three stages to enhance the pool of qualified, experienced students applying to your graduate program by sponsoring a Research Experience for Undergrads (REU).
- Avoiding Unintended Gender Bias in Letters of Recommendation // Learn how to identify and avoid unintended gender bias in writing and reviewing recommendation letters.
- How can you review applications in a more inclusive, dynamic way? (Coming Soon) // Learn about multifaceted (aka holistic) review, why it is important, and how you can implement it.
- Cementing Acceptances: How can you make sure diverse students pick your program? (Coming Soon) // Discover ways of encouraging prospective doctoral students to accept offer letters and enroll in your PhD program.
Learn about using this component in systemic change efforts here.
View systemic change resources here.
Fulfill Essential Functions through Advisors
Advising roles are explicit, and advisors fulfill their responsibilities. Advisors meet regularly with students to support progress, supervise acquisition of technical skills and professional development, and champion students within the department and the field. Departments proactively address non-optimal advising relationships.
Resources:
- Advisor as Steward of the Discipline // Learn about the causes and consequences of graduate student attrition, and read testimonials of how advising and support can address issues that lead to students’ early departure.
- NCWIT Tips: How can graduate advisors support diverse students? (Coming Soon) // Learn about essential roles and strategies for graduate advisors to help advisees thrive in their graduate careers.
- NCWIT Tips: 8 Ways to Give Students More Effective Feedback Using a Growth Mindset // Learn tips for giving effective feedback that students can use to increase their learning and improve their performance.
- How Can Encouragement Increase Persistence in Computing // Learn how using techniques for encouraging students promotes diversity and retains students.
- How Do Stereotype Threats Affect Retention // Gain an understanding of stereotype threats and learn alternatives to well-intentioned but ultimately harmful messages.
Learn about using this component in systemic change efforts here.
View systemic change resources here.
Support Each Stage of the Doctoral Lifecycle
Students know where they are and what they need to do because there is a clear timeline, a checklist of milestones, and criteria for how they will be evaluated. Students gradually gain responsibility over the course of the doctoral lifecycle and acquire a sense of ownership, autonomy, and meaningful progress.
Resources:
- Understanding the Doctoral Lifecycle: How do support needs evolve for students during their graduate career? (Coming Soon) // Learn how to provide students the various types of support they need through different stages of their graduate career.
- NCWIT Tips: Top 10 Ways You Can Retain Students in Computing // Learn research-supported ways to retain students in computing in both undergraduate and graduate-level courses.
- How Do You Retain Women through Collaborative Learning // Learn pedagogical techniques from undergraduate education research that can also be beneficial in graduate-level courses.
Learn about using this component in systemic change efforts here.
View systemic change resources here.
Healthy Social Ecosystems Help Everyone Thrive
Day-to-day interactions in classes, labs, and the department contribute to a sense of belonging in the local intellectual community. Peer and faculty mentoring programs foster students’ mental health, support progress, and grow their professional networks. Graduate student group(s) facilitate cohort and community building.
Resources:
- Critical Listening Guide: Just Because You Always Hear It, Doesn’t Mean It’s True // Identify common myths and misunderstandings about women’s participation in technology.
- Set Up a Mentoring Culture for Graduate Students: Roles of Faculty and Peers // Learn how to structure a formal program through which graduate students receive support and guidance from a community of faculty and peers.
- Evaluating a Mentoring Program Guide // Learn a step-by-step method (with example metrics) for evaluating a mentoring program in either industry or academia.
- How Does Combating Overt Sexism Affect Women’s Retention? // Learn how to assess your department’s social climate and identify areas for improvement.
- How Can Reducing Unconscious Bias Increase Women’s Success in IT? // Understand the detrimental effects of unconscious bias.
- Interrupting Bias: Graduate Student Scenarios (Coming Soon) // Learn how to host a meaningful workshop to better prepare participants to address unconscious bias.
- How Does the Physical Environment Affect Women’s Entry and Persistence in Computing? // Learn how the physical environment conveys messages that influence the degree to which students feel welcome and a sense of belonging.
Learn about using this component in systemic change efforts here.
View systemic change resources here.
Make Policies that Work for People, and Institutionalize Change Efforts through Policies
Policies, procedures, and expectations for faculty and students are clearly articulated in time-stamped, regularly updated faculty and student handbooks. Formal annual reviews of students use explicit criteria for progress and provide supportive solutions. Flexibility and support for family and life events are institutionalized. Mechanisms for preventing and addressing uncomfortable or difficult situations are codified and enforced. Successful reform strategies become official policies.
Resources:
- Designing a Student Handbook: Flexibility and Support Policies (Coming Soon) // Learn how to (re)design a graduate program handbook that supports diversity by providing clear information to faculty, staff, and students about expectations, responsibilities, and rights.
- NCWIT Tips: Making Change Stick (Coming Soon) // Learn specific techniques to help ensure that positive changes will last.
- Understanding the Doctoral Lifecycle: How do support needs evolve for students during their graduate career? (Coming Soon) // Learn how to provide students the various types of support they need through different stages of their graduate career.
Learn about using this component in systemic change efforts here.
View systemic change resources here.
Using this Component in Systemic Change Efforts:
- ES-Grad Infosheet // Learn more about the ES-Grad theoretical framework and consultation services (downloadable format).
- Focus Your Efforts through Self-Assessment (Coming Soon) // Use this questionnaire to assess strengths and areas for improvement for each of the key programmatic elements that support diversity, equity, and inclusion in your doctoral program.
- Strategic Planning Tool (Coming Soon) // Use this spreadsheet to track new ideas and interventions for improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in your doctoral program.
- How Do You Support Completion of Graduate Degrees and Engender Commitment to a Research Career? // Attrition may be a bigger problem than you think. Find out what to do about it.
Systemic Change Resources:
- Developing Shared Vision: How can you inspire your colleagues to support and contribute to DEI change efforts? (Coming Soon) // Learn how to increase buy-in from faculty, administration, and staff.
- Communicating for Change: Persuade Colleagues to Get on Board // Understand the four distinct and necessary steps for the long-term process of effective persuasion.
- Gearing Up for Change: Institutional Reform in Undergraduate Computing Programs // Learn about the prerequisites to transforming for diversity in undergraduate computing and ES-UP.
- Institutional Barriers & Their Effects // Gain insight and specific talking points for discussing policies and situations that systematically disadvantage certain groups of people.
- How Can Reducing Unconscious Bias Increase Women’s Success in IT? // Understand the detrimental effects of unconscious bias.
- What is the Impact of Gender Diversity on Technology Business Performance? Research Summary // Understand research on the benefits of gender-diverse teams in order to communicate the need for more diversity in technical fields.