UNH Today

When Jovana Milosavljevic-Ardeljan ‘21G came to UNH for graduate school, she wished she had a road map. A first-generation student from Serbia, she felt academically confident but beyond coursework, the process of getting a Ph.D. was mysterious: What were the expectations and processes for creating a proposal? Publishing journal articles? Attending academic conferences?

“As I went down the path toward my Ph.D., I really didn’t have a lamp to shed light on my way,” says Milosavljevic-Ardeljan, who now works at the Graduate School as its director for career, professional, and community development. “I was feeling in the dark and trying to figure out where to go.”

She’s now involved in a new project that aims to create that road map — and improve Ph.D. completion and career readiness outcomes — to what’s often called graduate school’s “hidden curriculum.” UNH is one of 10 institutions nationwide selected by the Council of Graduate Schools to participate in this National Science Foundation-funded initiative.

The Creating Learning Environments for Advancing Researchers, or CLEAR, initiative led by the Council of Graduate Schools builds upon on research that shows a strong correlation between student success and program environments where expectations and rules are clear and consistently applied. 

“CLEAR is a great project for connecting broader trends in doctoral education with applied practices that really impact students positively, especially first-generation students and those who might need help navigating the ‘hidden curriculum,’” says Graduate School Dean Ashby Kinch. “Based on the data we get back from the Council of Graduate Schools team, we will work with the programs to hone and refine their communication of research expectations in the context of best practices in STEM education.”

At UNH, the Graduate School will survey students and faculty in 14 STEM Ph.D. programs and options spanning biological and marine sciences, engineering, chemistry, computer science, math, and Earth science. These programs represent over half of UNH’s roughly 630 doctoral research students.  The Graduate School will also work with program directors to complete self-evaluations of their program practices in light of the data from the surveys.

Other universities participating in CLEAR are City University of New York, Colorado State University, Stony Brook University, Texas A&M University, University of Arizona, University of Denver, University of Mississippi, University of Missouri-Columbia, and University of Nevada-Reno.