Collaborative Research: Engaging Engineering Graduate Program Directors in Shifting the Default to Trauma-Informed Frameworks of Care

这一合作研究项目将通过探索研究生项目主管(GPD)如何将创伤信息护理作为项目默认，来解决影响超过40%研究生的日益严重的心理健康危机。GPD可以塑造部门程序，制定制度政策，并扰乱教师和学生之间的权力动态。换句话说，GPD对于改善和维持研究生的心理健康和幸福感至关重要。因此，该项目将构建一个带有GPD的课程，以帮助向GPD的大量受众实施了解创伤的做法。项目成果将支持改善和发展积极的干预措施，以支持研究生工程项目中积极的心理健康和福祉。改善工程项目中支持研究生心理健康的系统，将促进各级工程教育的招生和留住，这反过来又满足了国家对培养工程师以应对重大挑战的需求。该项目的成果还将提高对工程专业毕业生心理健康的认识，让担任领导职务的教职员工直接改变研究生课程的氛围。这些变化将作为循证模型，更多地采用支持心理健康和促进学生健康的做法。本项目将通过关注GPD在整合护理框架中的作用来审查心理健康危机，这些框架考虑到研究生已经经历或可能经历的全方位创伤。这项调查的结果将确定工程化GPD的作用，并为开发培训GPD社区以实施促进护理的循证做法的方法提供信息。这个项目将使用两个阶段的研究设计来解决三个研究问题(RQ)：RQ1：在培养他们的项目中的关怀文化方面，工程学研究生项目主任的特征是什么？RQ2：高等教育中的系统结构如何影响工程学研究生项目主任实施创伤知情护理框架？RQ3：哪些专业发展项目可以支持工程学研究生项目主任在支持研究生的方法中整合创伤信息框架的感知能力？第一阶段将通过全国调查和随后的半结构化访谈，利用顺序混合的方法来描述工程GPD的角色以及计划如何利用护理实践。第二阶段将建立在这些特征的基础上，共同开发一个基于证据的专业发展框架，在工程学研究生课程中创建创伤信息护理系统。我们将把团体辅导专业发展的方法与协作调查相结合，以探索参与GPD的生活经验，并使他们能够在他们的计划中尝试寄养关怀。这项研究设计将扩展现有的理论，以实施创伤信息护理框架，以促进工程学研究生教育中积极的心理健康和福祉。研究结果将提供给教师和教师可以用来认识创伤的广泛影响并认识到学生对创伤的经历、应对和反应的实践。这个项目将产生四个更广泛的影响：(1)GPD在工程学中的角色特征，研究人员可以利用它来加速研究生工程教育中的其他教育创新；(2)与GPD和咨询委员会合作开发和传播的原型，该委员会包含有执照的专业顾问，可以授权和使GPD对经历创伤的学生做出反应，并将新创伤的发生降至最低；(3)结构变化，以支持已经经历或将经历创伤的学生，以便他们能够回到深度学习并增加他们坚持下去的可能性。以及(4)能够通过实施关怀实践来更好地支持系统地将学生划分为少数族裔的教师。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This collaborative research project will address the growing mental health crisis that affects over 40% of graduate students by exploring how graduate program directors (GPDs) can make trauma-informed care a programmatic default. GPDs can shape departmental procedures, enact institutional policies, and disrupt power dynamics between faculty and students. In other words, GPDs are central to improving and sustaining graduate students’ mental health and wellbeing. As such, this project will construct a curriculum with GPDs to aid in implementing trauma-informed practices to a large audience of GPDs. The project outcomes will support the improvement and development of proactive interventions to support positive mental health and wellbeing in graduate engineering programs. Improving the systems that support graduate student mental health in engineering programs will enhance recruitment and retention at all levels of engineering education, which in turn addresses the national need of training engineers to address grand challenges. The project results will also raise awareness of graduate mental health in engineering programs by preparing faculty in leadership positions to change the climate in graduate programs directly. These changes will serve as evidence-based models that increase the adoption of practices to support mental health and promote student wellbeing.This project will examine the mental health crisis by focusing on the role of GPDs in integrating frameworks of care that consider the full range of traumas graduate students have experienced or could experience. The results of this investigation will characterize the roles of engineering GPDs and inform the development of methods to train a community of GPDs to implement evidence-based practices that foster care. This project will use a two-phase research design to address three research questions (RQ): RQ1: What are the characteristic roles of engineering graduate program directors in fostering cultures of care in their programs? RQ2: How do the systemic structures within higher education impact engineering graduate program directors’ implementation of trauma-informed frameworks of care? RQ3: What professional development program features can support engineering graduate program directors’ perceived ability to integrate trauma-informed frameworks of care in their approach to supporting graduate students? Phase 1 will leverage sequential mixed methods through a national survey followed by semi-structured interviews to characterize the roles of engineering GPDs and how programs leverage care practices. Phase 2 will build on these characterizations to collaboratively develop an evidence-based professional development framework for creating trauma-informed systems of care within engineering graduate programs. We will integrate a group coaching professional development approach with collaborative inquiry to explore the lived experiences of the GPDs participating and enable their attempts to foster care in their programs. The research design will expand existing theories for implementing trauma-informed frameworks of care to promote positive mental health and wellbeing within engineering graduate education. The results will inform the practices that faculty and instructors can use to realize the broad impact of trauma and recognize students experiencing, coping, and reacting to trauma. Four broader impacts will emerge from this project: (1) A characterization of GPD roles in engineering that researchers can use to accelerate other educational innovations in graduate engineering education, (2) A prototype developed and disseminated in collaboration with GPDs and an advisory board containing licensed professional counselors that can empower and enable GPDs to respond to students experiencing trauma and to minimize the occurrence of new trauma, (3) Structural changes to support students that have or will experience trauma, so they can return to deep learning and increase their likelihood to persist, and (4) Faculty who can better support systemically minoritized students through the implementation of care practices that respond to students’ identity-driven experiences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.