The Emerging Engineering Scholar: A Citation Analysis of Theses and Dissertations at Western Michigan University

Can one glimpse the development of emerging scholars in the work of engineering graduate students? To answer this question, the author studied the citation patterns in 96 Master's theses and 24 Ph.D. dissertations completed at Western Michigan University's College of Engineering and Applied Sciences between 2002 and 2006. The hypothesis of this study is that an increase in graduate student research competence between the master's and doctoral levels can be seen in their use of scholarly sources such as journal articles and conference papers. For each thesis and dissertation, bibliographic information (title, author, document type, year of publication) was gathered for each individual citation in the reference list(s). The data analysis indicates that doctoral engineering students use a significantly greater number of scholarly journal articles (44.3% to 29.3%) and conference papers (21.9% to 12.5%) than master's students. Also, master's students depend more heavily upon literature available on the web (web sites, government papers, grey literature, trade magazines, and patents). These results give tentative support to the hypothesis. Without knowing how faculty expectations influence the quality of graduate literature reviews, the hypothesis could not be conclusively supported with the data gathered. This study shows that there is a significant difference in the proportions of scholarly and other research sources used by master's and doctoral engineering students. The implications of these citation patterns in the development of the engineering scholar are discussed. The Emerging Engineering Scholar http://www.istl.org/09-winter/refereed.html 2 of 17 4/10/2009 12:13 PM Introduction The completion of a thesis or dissertation is the required initiation to the scholarly levels of any discipline, including engineering (Lovitts 2007). A significant step in this process is finding and citing scholarly sources in the literature review. This skill should show some development as students move from the master's to the doctoral level. According to Carlson (2006), as students progress academically, sources cited should demonstrate students' "growing sophistication and ability to think critically in their chosen discipline." But is this really the case? One way to get a sense of this process is to look at what types of sources engineering graduate students cite in their theses and dissertations. The author conducted a citation analysis of 96 Master's theses and 24 Ph.D. dissertations completed at Western Michigan University's College of Engineering and Applied Sciences between 2002 and 2006. In this study, the following questions were asked: Do master's engineering students use the same types of information sources in their research as doctoral students? Is there evidence of improved scholarship between master's and doctoral level work in engineering, based on the percentage of higher quality sources (in particular, journal articles, monographs, and conference papers) used in reference lists? In looking at what engineering graduate students cite, can one glimpse the development of emerging scholars?