Virtual Journal Club - Article Summary - Support Structures

Departmental support structures for physics graduate students: Development and psychometric evaluation of a self-report instrument By Diana Sachmpazidi and Charles Henderson Date & Time of Journal Club: Monday, June 27th 2022 at 12pmPT/3pmET Article PDF ─ Summary The American Physical Society’s Bridge Program (APS-BP) has significantly higher persistence rates than physics graduate education across the country (90% vs 60%). Motivated by this early positive outcome, the researchers aimed to explore and offer empirical evidence as to what aspects of the Bridge Program contribute to these higher persistence rates. This paper describes the development and psychometric evaluation of a survey instrument, the “Aspects of Student Experience Scale (ASES)”, that was designed to evaluate physics graduate students’ experiences related to different forms of departmental support that may have made the APS-BP successful, namely: (a) mentoring and research experience, (b) professional development, (c) social and academic integration, and (d) financial support. This paper supports the ongoing development and validation of this survey tool.397 physics graduate students across 19 programs participated in the study. The initial findings reported here reveal that graduate students experience adequate mentoring and financial support, but have limited social and academic integration or professional development. Practitioners may be able to use ASES to identify, based on students’ perspectives, which practices they may need to address to better support the student experience.