Student Services Beyond Institutional Resources - A Personal Approach

This session is a research base training on understanding adult student’s personal motivation to start and complete a post-secondary program. The graduate (adult) learner’s motivations and barriers to earning degree vary widely from the younger student population. Graduate students juggle personal commitment, possess professional positions, and juggle personal demands, that derail 50% of the graduate students setting out to complete a degree (Golde, 1998, 2000, 2005; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1980. They use their habitus, benefit from academic integration, and challenge self-sabotaging thoughts to overcome barriers.

This research is significant because a deeper understanding of how doctoral students navigate the barriers that impede completion can lead to more attentive retention and recruitment strategies, beyond the typical resources (e.g., assistantships, monetary awards, programmatic interventions). Advising, mental counseling (Benshoff et al., 2015), new student orientations (Gittings et al., 2018), and strategically planned resources (Manos et al., 2005; Sparkman et al., 2012) are mechanisms institutions can use to improve graduate persistence.

This session will focus on personal retention strategies that encompass personal understanding of one’s motivations ingrained through habitus and understanding how to overcome self-sabotaging thoughts. The audience will be challenged to visit their own habitus to understand how they persisted to degree completion.