2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Switching research labs: A phenomenological study of international graduate students.

Presented at Student Experiences and Development – Session 1

International graduate students in engineering and science deal with cultural shock as they navigate and try to adapt to a new educational system in the United States of America (US) [1]. Many international graduate students deal with multiple challenges which some of their US national peers may not deal with [2]. For different reasons, graduate students may request to change from one research group to another [3]. Switching their research lab is complicated, often bringing many unknowns for the student. However, the experiences warranting a change and transitioning from one research group to another, often filled with trauma and stress, are peculiar for international students. With the additional challenges they have already been facing on campus, switching from one research lab to another puts more challenges on the everyday lives of international graduate students. International students, who join a new research lab and try to balance their research, course studies, and daily lives, have yet to be given a voice in the literature. We do not know the international graduate students’ lived experiences in the new laboratories as they try to transition to the new lab’s research work, cultural norms, and social interactions. In this phenomenological study, we describe the lived experiences of international graduate students as they pursue their academic and scholarship goals in a new research lab they switched to.

Authors

Ms. Ifeoluwa Priscilla Babalola Texas A&M University [biography]

Ms Babalola holds a BS and an MS degree in Chemical Engineering. She is currently a PhD. student in Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, College Station, TX. In her current research, Ms Babalola designs and develops curricula to teach computational tools to chemical engineering undergraduate students. She conducts phenomenological studies to capture and document graduate students' lived experiences in US engineering programs.
Dr. Victor M. Ugaz Texas A&M University [biography]

Victor Ugaz is the Carolyn S. & Tommie E. Lohman '59 Professor in Engineering Education in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University. He joined the faculty in January 2003. His research focuses broadly on harnessing the unique characteristics of transport and flow at the microscale, with specific interests in microfluidic flows (both single-phase and nanoparticle suspensions), microchip gel electrophoresis, PCR thermocycling in novel convective flow devices, and construction of 3D vascular flow networks for biomedical applications. Ugaz earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Aerospace Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University. He serves as Undergraduate Program Director in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Chair of the interdisciplinary Master of Biotechnology (MBIOT) Program at Texas A&M.
Dr. Bugrahan Yalvac http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-3675-1936 Texas A&M University [biography]

Bugrahan Yalvac is an associate professor of science and engineering education in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture at Texas A&M University, College Station. He received his Ph.D. in science education at the Pennsylvania State University in 2005. Prior to his current position, he worked as a learning scientist for the VaNTH Engineering Research Center at Northwestern University for three years. Yalvac’s research is in STEM education, 21st century skills, and design and evaluation of learning environments informed by the How People Learn framework.

Download paper (726 KB)

Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.

» Download paper

« View session

For those interested in:

Graduate
Faculty
race/ethnicity