Empowering Doctoral Students for the Dissertation

Introduction

The old adage “It takes a village” is likely one of the most commonly used phrases in the acknowledgments at the beginning of a dissertation. When completing the dissertation, doctoral students reflect on, and recognize, a host of people who encouraged them through the process including ancestors, parents, spouses, siblings, children, colleagues, classmates, faculty, and so on. One relationship developed through this process that has been found to be critical to student completion is between the student and their dissertation chair (Castelló et al., 2017). The purpose of this chapter is to offer some insight into how that relationship can be effectively structured through the use of the empowerment framework (Tapp et al., 2019).

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2018), between 2007 and 2017 post-baccalaureate enrollment rose 14%, from 2.6 million to 3.0 million. Unlike undergraduate enrollment, which was lower in 2017 than in 2010, post-baccalaureate enrollment was higher in 2017 than in 2010. By 2029, post-baccalaureate enrollment is projected to increase to 3.1 million. Despite increasing doctoral enrollment, only 181,352 doctoral students were awarded degrees in the period 2016–2017, which many studies have found represents less than half of the students who started a doctoral program during that period (Wollast et al., 2018). Even for those who do complete the degree, the average doctoral student is enrolled for 7.6 years prior to degree conferral (National Center for Education Statistics, 2018). As enrollment continues to increase, illustrated by the significant increase in total post-baccalaureate enrollment of 41% between 2000 and 2018, additional research is needed to understand how to best support these students to completion.

Nutov and Hassan (2011) have suggested that the doctoral process is an intensive, emotionally loaded, depleting, and inspiring process, during which the doctoral students experience a wide range of situations and emotions that may promote or decrease their engagement in their doctoral studies. For many students, the dissertation is the longest and most difficult piece of assessed writing during their academic career. In fact, research studies have found that positive and meaningful interpersonal relationships between student and chair offer supervisory support that encourages self-directed learning and offers great support towards doctoral completion (Ciampa & Wolfe, 2018; Lindsay, 2012).

While there are many books on the role of the chair (see Butin, 2009; Churchill & Sanders, 2007; Oltman et al., 2019), the purpose of this chapter is to propose a conceptual framework to scaffold the relationship between the chair and the doctoral student which provides guidance to both chairs and students engaging in dissertation work. Specifically, we will be utilizing the empowerment framework, which has been used both in management research to analyze the relationship between managers and employees (Cameron & McNaughtan, 2014; McNaughtan et al., 2019), and in higher education as a way to frame academic programs (Tapp et al., 2019). The utility of the empowerment framework stems from the way that it structures relationships and promotes positive outcomes such as satisfaction, commitment, and engagement (McNaughtan et al., 2019).