Paving Your Own Pathway to Excellence: Benefits of Working with Research Assistants as a Doctoral Student

Amanda Watson, University of Pennsylvania

DOI: 10.58117/s832-2z45

Introduction

Doctoral programs provide inadequate preparation for the wide range of responsibilities doctoral students take on as they transition into a faculty role (Sutherland et al., 2022; Jungels et al., 2014; Stacy, 2000). These responsibilities include teaching, mentoring, and management of budgets and personnel. A lack of professional preparation leads to feelings of stress, anxiety, and a lack of confidence among students and new faculty (Sutherland et al., 2022; Jungels et al., 2014; Fauer & Wilson, 2024). Some doctoral students may gain experience in proposing and managing a budget through grant submissions or grant writing workshops, but this is not a universal experience. Similarly, some students may receive training for teaching, but it is not always required. With little institutional support, it is often up to the students themselves to pave their own pathway to excellence in mentoring, teaching, research, and management.

A coordinated response to the lack of institutional support for doctoral students’ professional development is hindered by a gap in the literature. A recent scoping review exploring the impact of nursing doctoral students’ perceptions of their PhD program on the PhD-Faculty pipeline corroborates the lack of existing literature in this area (Halabicky & Porat-Dahlerbruch, 2026). The authors suggest that institutions develop interventions that address doctoral students’ educational experiences in an effort to promote the choice to pursue a postdoctoral career in academia. Fauer and Wilson (2024) provide suggestions for new nursing faculty members to supplement the skills they may not be provided in their doctoral education or faculty orientation programs. These include honing skills independently and engaging in professional development opportunities. These suggestions lack an actionable component and place the responsibility for professional development entirely on the new faculty members themselves. Giordano and colleagues (2021) state that resources and programmatic interventions for doctoral student skill building need to be addressed at the institutional level to prevent skill gaps for nursing scholars. While this call for expanded support is important, there were no concrete suggestions for how institutions should go about addressing this issue. There is a critical gap in the literature on professional development of nursing doctoral students and a corresponding lack of specific, actionable suggestions for promoting professional development.

One approach to enhancing professional development in nursing doctoral programs is to incorporate adult learning theory, specifically experiential learning (Mukhalalati & Taylor, 2019; Iskandarova & Ford, 2024). Kolb Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) posits that learning is a continuous process grounded in experience (Kolb, 1984). The ideal learning experience occurs through a four-step cyclical process of experiencing, reflecting, thinking, and acting. Learners grasp information through experiencing and thinking and transform it into knowledge through reflecting and acting (Institute for Experiential Learning, 2025). Literature on the use of the experiential learning cycle in doctoral student education is limited. One study incorporated experiential learning through a required professional externship in a leadership studies doctoral program (Iskandarova & Ford, 2024). The participants reported positive experiences with the externship, which integrated hands-on experiences with their curriculum. The study found that an experiential learning externship was a critical learning tool that could positively impact students’ professional development (Iskandarova & Ford, 2024). Doctoral student professional development can be supported at the institutional level, as suggested by Giordano and colleagues (2021), through purposeful integration of experiential learning.

Hiring and working with Research Assistants (RAs) as a doctoral student is an overlooked experiential learning opportunity. As a third-year doctoral student, I received pilot funding for a project titled, Dimensional Analysis of Nurse Identity and Nurse-Led Care (DANI-NLC). The purpose of the study was to use the qualitative method Dimensional Analysis (DA) to understand nurse identity and nurse-led care as portrayed in nursing textbooks. I recognized that the project would be intensive and time-consuming, so I included two RAs in the grant proposal. In the absence of existing literature on professional development in nursing doctoral programs, this example serves as a case study of experiential learning. The aim of this commentary is to demonstrate the scholarly and career benefits of hiring, training, and working alongside RAs through examples from DANI-NLC. An infographic that summarizes the components of this case study can be found in the Appendix (Figure 1). I also highlight the constraints of this skill-building approach and discuss the implications of this knowledge gap on the nursing discipline as a whole.

Benefits

Mentorship Skills

As a doctoral student, working with RAs can serve as an early introduction to a mentorship role. Guiding RAs through the research process allows you to practice building rapport and relationships with mentees. Additionally, you are exposed to the nuances of navigating leadership roles and dynamics in an academic setting. This practice and exposure provide opportunities to gain valuable experience assessing a mentee’s level of understanding and providing adequate support to help them succeed. I used an exercise called “rose, bud, and thorn” to cultivate a comfortable mentor-mentee relationship. In this exercise, each person shares their rose, bud, and thorn for the week. A rose is something good that happened, a bud is something you are looking forward to, and a thorn is something that has been difficult or that you’ve been struggling with. These conversations helped to build relationships that were supportive and demonstrated mutual respect.

Practicing mentorship skills during a doctoral program has a hidden advantage. As a student, you don’t necessarily carry the professional titles that can intimidate RAs. Taking the time while I was in this advantageous position for relationship building had far reaching effects. I was able to get to know my RAs so we could work together to get their knowledge and skills to the necessary level. Knowing their individual needs allowed me to provide support that benefited the study. In a way, this PI-RA relationship mirrors the familiar preceptor-preceptee relationship in clinical practice. Just as serving in the role of preceptor helps clinical nurses to grow their professional skills, this investment in mentorship further enhanced my research, teaching, and management skills.

Research Skills

Mentoring RAs enhances a doctoral student’s proficiency in research methods. The training process requires you to explain the foundations of the methods used in your study, reinforcing confidence and enhancing rigor. For DANI-NLC, I needed to demonstrate to the RAs how to conduct the method, despite being new to it myself. Because the study employed purely inductive qualitative methods, explaining my personal approach to sampling and analysis enhanced the rigor of the study. I felt confident that I could clearly articulate rationales for my analytic choices. Ensuring that the RAs and I were taking the same approach promoted consistency in execution of the method across all team members. The process of teaching my RAs about the phenomenon of interest and the method helped me realize my proficiency in those areas. In nursing, we like to say, “see one, do one, teach one.” Being able to teach someone a skill is a good sign that you are proficient in it.

Teaching Skills

As a doctoral student, you can incorporate mini lessons into your RA training plan. Planning these lessons provides exposure to teaching skills like lesson and curriculum planning, finding opportunities for interactive activities, and identifying supplemental readings and resources. Teaching content-driven lessons when training RAs allows you to become comfortable in an instructor role. You can practice your content delivery skills, your ability to engage learners, and how to field questions and give feedback. Given that most doctoral programs provide little support for building teaching skills, working with RAs provides a valuable opportunity to expand your expertise.

Through planning mini lessons, I learned to develop interactive activities. These activities provided the RAs with the opportunity to practice skills and demonstrate theoretical knowledge. For example, I made one lesson interactive by asking them to generate a random research question to demonstrate the concepts they learned. I asked them whether a naturalist or positivist paradigm felt more appropriate for answering their question, and whether they would use inductive or deductive reasoning. To teach open coding, which involves line-by-line analysis and selection of words and phrases representing meaning units, I started by independently open coding a short paragraph. During our meeting, I had the RAs open code the same paragraph. We placed our coded paragraphs side by side to compare them. I explained the rationale for my analytic choices which, again, contributes to the rigor of the study. Demonstrating their knowledge and skills during the lesson allowed the RAs to solidify their understanding of the material. The opportunity to practice also helped them to point out areas of confusion to address before applying the skills to our study.

Management Skills

Hiring and training RAs can help doctoral students develop valuable management skills. Typically, doctoral students work either independently, with an advisor, or on research teams. Without the opportunity to learn how to lead a research team during the doctoral program, taking on a leadership role as an early career scholar can be challenging. Essential skills like organizing schedules and timelines, hiring RAs, assigning responsibility, and holding team members accountable are difficult to learn as a doctoral student. Hiring RAs provides the opportunity to learn to be a PI in a low-stakes environment.

When applying for funding for DANI-NLC, I created a preliminary project timeline which was adapted as the RAs were hired on. We adjusted the timeline based on our progress in obtaining the study materials, RA training, data collection and management, coding, and analysis. In addition to managing our timeline based on the team’s progress, it was my responsibility to decide how the tasks would be divided among the team. I provided a rationale for my decisions, considering factors like feasibility and rigor. I also had to ensure that the RAs were completing their assigned work adequately. My approach to this oversight was both documentary and dialogical. The expectations were clear that after each shift, the RAs would document their hours and write a short “shift summary” detailing the study activities they had completed. I held myself to the same standard and documented my hours and shift summaries as well. I tracked their progress by having them explain what they accomplished that week in our weekly meetings. I set the expectation early on that we were going to be very open in sharing our progress on a regular basis. This horizontal management approach led to a low-pressure environment where “oversight” was considered a way to keep up with one another rather than a top-down “checking” approach.

Discussion

Constraints of Working with RAs

There are some key constraints to working with RAs as a doctoral student. The support of an advisor can be helpful in developing your own mentoring skills and translating those into practice. Conversely, a lack of support, for example an advisor who does not acknowledge or value the benefits of working with RAs, may act as a barrier to developing the skillsets discussed in this commentary. As is usually the case, time is also a limiting factor. Rather than a benefit, it could actually be harmful to attempt to train RAs when you don’t have sufficient time. Using time, a luxury among doctoral students, that you don’t have on training RAs and gaining mentorship skills could take away from the primary benefit of conducting the study. In addition to the potential harms to doctoral students themselves, RAs may also be harmed by perfunctory training. Given that RA positions function as an entry point to research and an opportunity to build foundational skills, providing RAs with insufficient support and training can result in bad research practices. Teaching skills poorly is not in the best interest of the doctoral student, RA, or the greater research community.

Like time, money is a limited and finite resource. Ideally, RAs should be compensated for the hours of work they contribute to a study. It is certainly possible to hire RAs on a volunteer basis, but this practice raises ethical concerns. When RAs are not paid for the services they provide, it contributes to problematic power dynamics within academia (Drolet et al., 2023). The expectation of free labor in exchange for potential future career benefits situates RAs as systematically subordinate to those they work for, rather than equals. As I have highlighted throughout this commentary, building relationships based on mutual respect is enormously beneficial to both skill development and research quality.

Implications for the Nursing Discipline

It is critical that schools of nursing explore opportunities to provide institutional support for the development of professional skills. The extant literature suggests that doctoral programs do not provide the support necessary to graduate students that are ready to step into a faculty role (Sutherland et al., 2022; Jungels et al., 2014; Stacy, 2000). Further research should investigate the gaps in scholarly and career development in doctoral programs. The nursing discipline would benefit from a better understanding of student perceptions of institutional supports and their impact on student preparedness for faculty positions. In the meantime, and as suggested by Giordano and colleagues (2021), innovation at the institution-level could begin to fill gaps in professional development. For example, the experiential learning-based externship model presented by Iskandarova and Ford (2024) could be adapted to nursing doctoral curriculum. Schools of nursing could integrate formative professional experiences and require students to demonstrate competencies in professional skills like teaching, mentorship, and managing personnel and budgets.

An investment in skill development is especially important as the nursing discipline is experiencing a critical faculty shortage. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) reported a national nurse faculty vacancy rate of 7.8%, mostly consisting of positions requiring or preferring candidates with a doctoral degree (AACN, 2024). Halabicky and Porat-Dahlerbruch (2026) suggest that evidence‐based strategies for professional development “at each stage of the [PhD-Faculty] pipeline are necessary to combat the nursing faculty shortage” (p. 4135). It would be in the best interest of the nursing discipline to assess the potential impact of the integration of institutional supports for skill development on faculty employment and retention.

Conclusion

Nursing doctoral programs should consider providing stronger support for career development. Making such changes would demonstrate an acknowledgement of the value that the skills of mentorship, teaching, and management hold for future faculty members. Doctoral students would benefit from the purposeful integration of experiential learning opportunities at the institution level. A lack of literature that explores gaps in skill development and approaches to filling these gaps leaves institutions without evidence-based solutions. A failure to invest in skill building at the doctoral level could worsen the already critical faculty shortage in nursing. In the absence of coordinated institutional responses to this issue, doctoral students can pave their own pathway to career excellence by hiring, training, and working alongside RAs. This has been clearly demonstrated through my own experiences as a doctoral student PI. Where support, time, and funding allow, development of essential skills will follow.

Generative AI Statement

I, Watson, Amanda, hereby confirm that this manuscript is the result of my own independent scholarly work, and that all material from the work of others has been fully acknowledged. No content generated by AI technologies has been used in this assessment.

Funding Statement

The pilot project discussed in this commentary, Dimensional Analysis of Nurse Identity and Nurse-Led Care (DANI-NLC), was funded by the Hillman Foundation as a Pilot Award in December of 2024. I was eligible for this funding because of my status as a current Hillman Scholar.

Conflicts of Interest

I have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

References

Appendix

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