At the end of February, the Louise McBee Institute for Higher Education hosted a Faculty–Student Research Showcase for prospective PhD students, highlighting the collaborative research that defines the McBee Institute’s scholarly community. The event featured four research teams, each presenting ongoing projects and offering insights into their conceptual framing, research design, and emerging findings.
Beyond showcasing scholarship, the event underscored the McBee Institute’s commitment to mentorship and hands-on research training. Current doctoral students emphasized how working alongside faculty on these projects has helped them greatly develop their research skills and grow into independent scholars.
Examining the Rise of Troubling Master’s Programs Under 2010s Changing Landscape
Dr. Christian Smith & Yuwen Cheng
Assistant Professor Christian Smith and first-year doctoral student Yuwen Cheng presented a project that is examining the potential rise of troubling master’s programs over the 2010s. This decade came shortly after the Great Recession that financially injured universities and shortly after the introduction of the federal Grad PLUS loan program, which allowed graduate students to borrow up to the cost of attendance set by their institution. The number of master’s degree offerings expanded rapidly after these two shocks.
Smith and Cheng—in collaboration with Madeline Brighouse Glueck from the University of Wisconsin-Madison—are interrogating whether this expansion has produced programs that function more as revenue generators than meaningful pathways to economic mobility. The research is centered around several key questions: Have wage returns to master’s degrees declined in recent years? Do newly launched programs tend to offer limited labor market value, weak job relevance, or poor occupational alignment? What are the types of institutions launching troubling programs? And are online master’s programs especially concerning?
During the presentation, Cheng also outlined the structured and intentional nature of their collaboration, including weekly meetings, clear expectations from Dr. Smith, and a weekly task tracker. Her work has included interactive literature screening, Stata-based data preparation, cleaning and merging datasets, and constructing analytical variables—an experience that helped her discover a strong interest in coding.
“Overall, what I have appreciated most is that this collaboration has been a training ground for me,” Cheng shared. “I have learned how to communicate expectations, manage uncertainty, and most importantly, grow into being an independent researcher. As a first-year doctoral student, that has been a meaningful foundation for my development.”
Centering Cultural Heritage and Community Networks
Dr. Meseret Hailu & Sa’ada Abdulkadir
Assistant Professor Meseret Hailu and first-year doctoral student Sa’ada Abdulkadir presented on two research projects focused on Black African refugee and asylum-seeking students’ experiences in U.S. higher education. Sa’ada introduced the broader research team, which includes McBee doctoral students William Redding and Ernest Adom, and School of Social Work doctoral student Elizabeth Mukasa. She also shared the team’s structure, highlighting the team’s weekly meetings and their shared task tracker to promote collaboration, transparency, and equitable labor distribution.
The first project they presented, Narratives of Persistence: African Cultural Heritage Among Refugee Students, is funded by the Spencer Foundation and explores how Black African refugee students draw on their cultural heritage to navigate U.S. higher education. The project challenges narratives in literature that frames assimilation of refugee students as a prerequisite for success and instead highlights cultural heritage as a source of resilience for these students. The second project, Exploring Higher Education and Employment Access through Ethnic Community Based Organizations, examines how immigrant/refugee-serving non-profits support students’ access to higher education and employment.
The graduate assistants contribute to all stages of the research process, including annotated bibliographies, literature reviews, participant recruitment, data collection/analysis, editing grant proposals and manuscripts, and developing presentation materials. Students are also part of conference presentations and peer-reviewed publications.
Reflecting on her experience, Abdulkadir highlighted the intentional mentorship embedded in her assistantships. “I feel super privileged to work with two amazing faculty members here, Dr. Hailu and Dr. Stich. The first meetings I had with both of them, the first question they asked me was, ‘What do I want to achieve from this assistantship?’ I went back and look at my résumé to find what was missing—and they intentionally helped me achieve those things.”
Embark Georgia Research Consortium
Dr. Erik Ness & Imani Callan
Professor Erik Ness and third-year doctoral student Imani Callan presented work from the Embark Georgia Research Consortium (EGRC), a multidisciplinary research initiative that is housed in the Embark Georgia Center and that focuses on students who have experienced foster care and/or homelessness. Embark Georgia’s endeavors include hosting a pre-collegiate summer program that introduces foster youth to college life and campus resources at the University of Georgia.
In addition to supporting students, Embark Georgia builds capacity for adults by identifying and supporting Designated Points of Contacts (DPOCs)–faculty or staff members at institutions across Georgia who coordinate services for students from foster care backgrounds. EGRC’s research agenda emerges directly from this practice-oriented work, following a practice–research–practice model in which the practice informs the research questions, and the research findings feed back into improved practice.
Callan presented findings from The Scarlet F: Students Experiencing Foster Care’s Sense of Belonging and Othering through Pre-Collegiate Experiences, a study currently in the revise and resubmit phase for the Journal of Child Welfare. As the first author on the paper, Callan has led the project since her first year as a graduate assistant with EGRC.
Drawing from Strayhorn’s sense of belonging framework and phenomenology, the study examines how students experiencing foster care understand belonging during major life transitions—both aging out of foster care and entering college. Callan shared that the findings reveal that belonging is often defined as comfort, authenticity, and reliable support, and that pre-collegiate programs can simultaneously foster belonging and create feelings of “othering” through labels that feel necessary but stigmatizing.
“It’s a really great opportunity,” Callan reflected. “I’m getting a lot of practical hands-on experience—not only writing publications but also learning how to develop reports for internal and external partners.”
Research–Practice Partnership with Achieve Atlanta
Dr. Amy Stich, William Walker, & Sa’ada Abdulkadir
Associate Professor Amy Stich, third-year doctoral student William Walker, and first-year doctoral student Sa’ada Abdulkadir concluded the showcase with a presentation on Reducing Inequities in Postsecondary Education and Beyond: Life After College for Achieve Atlanta Scholars. The broader research team includes Myla Cash-Williams, a student in UGA’s School of Law, and Daivon Jarrell, a research consultant in the Georgia Policy Lab at Georgia State University, both of whom are former Achieve Atlanta Scholars.
Stich and colleagues presented findings from the qualitative portion of a larger mixed-methods, research-practice partnership (RPP) with Achieve Atlanta and Georgia Policy Labs. The project, funded by the William T. Grant Foundation, examines how Achieve Atlanta’s need-based scholarship and associated services shape their experiences and opportunities, and affect future outcomes (including their financial well-being).
Now in its fourth year, the current phase of the research project is focused on alumni outcomes and subjective notions of social mobility after graduation. Walker and Abdulkadir outlined their efforts on the project, including the development of the study’s design and data collection efforts. The research team is currently conducting interviews with 50 former Achieve Atlanta Scholars and is also engaged in data analysis.
Walker emphasized the value of mentorship and peer collaboration within the project. “The one thing that I’ve come to enjoy the most is the informal mentorship I’ve gotten to do with students like Sa’ada,” he shared. “We read literature together, share ideas, and learn from one another. It has also been fantastic to work under Dr. Stich—she’s a phenomenal mentor who is supportive across the board.”