I have managed to pass a new threshold this academic year. For the first time in my career, I mentored five doctoral students to completion in 2022 that successfully defended their dissertations and graduated. Historically, the most number of doctoral students I mentored in a single year was four. I am so proud of my new doctoral graduates, and I am proud of myself for surviving this past Spring and Summer since I was essentially reading dissertations every weekend. If you are interested, here is a list of my amazing 2022 graduates and their dissertation titles:
- Max Sommer: A metacognitive approach to foster the development of credibility assessment skills in undergraduate learners
- Robert A. Fulgenzi: An exploration of organizational culture in the remote work environment: A Delphi study
- John Hampton: Experiences of video game play and Subreddit communities on self-reported well-being and resilience during COVID-19: A phenomenological study of Animal Crossing: New Horizons
- Rui “Tammy” Huang (Co-Mentored with Dr. Matthew Schmidt): Designing a digital game to foster international English language learners’ language-related episodes: A design-based research approach
- Zalmond C. B. Abbondanza: A design and development case study of an online corequisite module for a college Algebra course
The only negative to this accomplishment is that I am now down to five students in the DETAIL Lab, which is my official research group at UF. Since we hired so many faculty at UF in the past five years, I do not think I will ever have that many graduates in a single year again. In many ways, this makes me happy (less reading on the weekends), but I will miss the synergy I have had with the group of students I have had the last two years. They were amazing!