<b>Layered Axiology: Graduate Students' Experiences with Values in an Engineering Research Center</b>

<p dir="ltr">This study presents axiology as the values, attitudes, and beliefs that inform, guide, and motivate research. “Layered axiology” refers to the complex interactions between researchers’ individually held values, attitudes, and beliefs and the goals, missions, and initiatives of the institutions within which they exist. This interplay is especially salient for graduate students who are becoming researchers as they socialize into the field. Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) offer a valuable opportunity to examine layered axiology, as they are well-funded research institutions that explicitly state the values and goals that guide convergent engineering work. Graduate students’ values and value alignment is critical to study, as feelings of misalignment or dissonance can serve as a roadblock to persistence, degree completion, and research development.</p><p dir="ltr">This dissertation leveraged an ethnographic case study approach to investigate the following questions: (1) How do personal and surrounding institutional axiology influence and inform graduate students’ research axiology at an Engineering Research Center (ERC)? (2) In what ways does graduate student axiology align with faculty and ERC-espoused values? (3) How does alignment or misalignment of values connect to students’ research experiences? This study involved three data streams, focusing on interviews with graduate students and faculty, with publicly accessible site documents supporting the grounding and development of findings.</p><p dir="ltr">Four main findings emerged from this study, highlighting insights from multiple ecological levels within the Engineering Research Center. First, graduate students emphasized the importance of learning to balance work and self as they navigate their graduate educational journeys. Second, graduate students presented perspectives on the role and essence of engineering, informed by disciplinary differences. Third, graduate students and faculty emphasized the importance of collegiality and community-building in mitigating the challenges of working in a highly interdisciplinary research environment. Finally, the experiences of the graduate students and faculty in the Center highlighted a relationship between the alignment of values and social position within the Center.</p><p dir="ltr">The findings presented in this study hold implications for the socialization of graduate students into the field of engineering research and can provide transferable lessons for graduate students, faculty, and administrators in other locales of graduate education, especially interdisciplinary research spaces.</p>