Normalizing Struggle: Dimensions of Faculty Support for Doctoral Students and Implications for Persistence and Well-Being

Abstract

Faculty mentoring is a durable structure of doctoral education that facilitates intellectual growth, professional socialization, and progressive independence. We must more deeply understand, however, professors’ role in supporting doctoral students’ persistence and well-being, especially for students from groups who have been historically excluded and marginalized in their fields. This study strived for such understanding by evaluating findings of a phenomenology of faculty support in 4 high-diversity science, technology, engineering, and mathematics PhD programs at 2 research universities. I found that holistic faculty support has academic, psychosocial, and sociocultural dimensions, which faculty enact through specific behaviors. Students reported meaningful experiences with faculty that normalized struggle and failure by promoting a growth mind-set, validating student competence and potential, and opening discussion about racialized and gendered dynamics in academia. Collectively, these activities may prevent students from misconstruing the difficulty of graduate school with their ability to succeed. The article discusses how the findings may advance future higher education research and faculty professional development.