Can coaching bridge the gap for incoming Latinx graduate students?

ABSTRACT

Attrition rates in the first two years of graduate school are high and ∼50% higher for underrepresented students. Here we evaluate an online group coaching intervention using a controlled and an experimental group to determine its impact on skills that are likely predictors of student success, namely the Hallmark of Success indices developed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Our intervention includes eight online coaching sessions (four prior to the first year of graduate school and four during the first year of graduate school). Coaching group sessions, led by certified coaches, address Resilience, Risk and Protective Factors, Accountability, Leadership, Teamwork, Professional Networking, and Self-Assessment. We evaluated the change in Hallmark of Success indices with a pre- and post-questionnaire of 44 items used to assess students’ self-evaluation in nine areas. Students in the experimental coaching group showed a significant increase in the Hallmark of Success indices in seven out of nine areas of student performance between the pre- and post-questionnaires compared to the null model of no changes between time periods. In addition, in all of the nine indices of success, we noted significant differences between the pre- and post-surveys for the experimental group. Our experimental design shows that our cost-effective coaching model improves student performance as perceived by the students.

KEYWORDS:

• Coaching
• graduate school
• Hispanics
• underrepresented population
• Hallmarks of success
• Puerto Rico

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their great suggestions and comments. Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute Of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number U01GM138432. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Also, we extend our sincere gratitude to Coaches Delia Reyes-López, Carilú Pérez-Caraballo, and Ivonne Bayron-Huertas, as well as the participating students in this study, and the Institute of Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Puerto Rico Cayey for their pivotal and continuous support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The NIH (2024) state in their website, ‘An underrepresented population refers to a subgroup of the population whose representation is disproportionately low relative to their numbers in the general population.’

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Institutes of Health [grant number 1U01GM138432-01].