STAMP of Success in Doctoral Education: Student Training, Advising, and Mentorship Practices

Success in a doctoral program can be captured by students’ adjustment to the academic community and their achievement. In recent years, growing concerns have been raised by media, policy makers, and academics about reported mental health issues amongst PhD students. Research suggests that the mental health of PhD students can be improved when there are available supports related to management of work-life balance, workload, decision-making, and leadership styles that lead to satisfactory and constructive work relations (Levecque et al., 2017). Faculty advisors play a central role in the overall adjustment and trajectory of development for students completing doctoral programs. My Provost’s Teaching Fellow project involved ongoing work related to the development of a model to support doctoral students’ self-determined learning—Self-Determined Learning Mentorship Model (SDLMM). Persons who are self-determined have an awareness of their strengths and weaknesses and base their choices and goals on this self-assessment (Wehmeyer & Metzler, 1995). Self-determination has evidence to predict achievement (Zheng et al., 2014) and there is evidence that suggests self-determination is associated with positive adult outcomes (Shogren et al., 2015). The SDLMM is based on the Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction (SDLMI). The SDLMI was designed to provide a model to enable educators to teach students to self-direct the instructional process as a means to achieve educationally relevant goals and enhance self-determination, and has been shown to be an effective intervention for achieving enhanced student outcomes. My project focuses on supports for faculty who are engaged in doctoral student training, advising, and mentorship--and the use of the SDLMM to promote goal attainment and problem solving.