In addition to international diversity, the vast majority of science and
engineering graduate students spend their graduate degrees organized into research groups
around the specialty of their faculty advisor especially during the dissertation phase (Crede &
Borrego, in press; Grevholm, Persson, & Wall, 2005; Turner, 2006). There remains a need for
more focused studies on this phase of doctoral study in engineering, which is dominated by participation in a research group, and can be directly linked to retention of graduate students