Guest Speaker, Joceyln Nardo, Ph.D., Ohio State University

Catalysts for Change: Cultivating a Culture for Chemistry Graduate Student Success

This project investigates how departmental culture shapes chemistry graduate students’ belonging, development, and access to opportunity. The project responds to documented challenges in doctoral education including unclear success criteria, inconsistent mentoring, and hidden cultural norms and seeks to generate actionable, evidence-based pathways for systemic improvement. We designed and deployed a mixed-methods pilot survey to chemistry graduate students measuring six domains informed by prior graduate-education and equity scholarship: (1) graduate milestones, (2) research competency, (3) teaching competency, (4) advisor support (academic and emotional), (5) peer and departmental culture, and (6) academic and demographic background. This talk will center on the qualitative data which is founded on academic citizenship, which is a set of behaviors, responsibilities, and relational practices through which members of an academic community contribute to its collective functioning, integrity, and well-being beyond their individual scholarly outputs. It includes activities such as mentoring, service, collaboration, care work, and stewardship that sustain learning environments, support colleagues and students, and advance the shared mission of the institution and discipline. Findings show that academic citizenship is unevenly distributed across student groups and is most strongly predicted by research competency and access to departmental resources. Advisor emotional support and advisor skill dynamics emerged as significant contributors to academic citizenship. Results informed department-level interventions, including (1) a redesigned first-year experience course integrating research, teaching, communication, and wellness, and (2) a multidimensional mentoring model grounded in sociopolitical noticing and disciplinary metaphors (chemist, family, coach). The project demonstrates that departmental culture can be surfaced, measured, and intentionally reshaped to create conditions where graduate students thrive because of rather than in spite of our systems.