Research

ASEE Awards 2022

ASEE Awards 2022

Academic Careers & Workplaces

I am an empirical policy researcher who uses mixed methods to examine academic careers, training, and workplaces. Broadly, I focus on extending our understanding of higher education and academia outside of the elite settings where sociology of science research tends to focus. This has led me to develop research interests in several areas, including research productivity in constrained professional environments, mixed research/teaching careers, student experiences in terminal master’s programs, and racial and gender disparities among faculty in non-elite programs. My most recent work examines academic research productivity in lower-resourced and emergent research institutions in the United States. To examine these and other topics, I use a combination of survey methods, other quantitative methods, qualitative methods, and data science approaches including text analysis, network analysis, and bibliometric analysis. 

My dissertation, “Understanding Faculty Research Productivity in Striving Research Universities,” uses a mixed-methods approach to expand our understanding of research productivity and academic research careers outside of elite universities, where the U.S. literature has traditionally focused. Striving research universities, as transitional settings, allow us to delve into the complex causality of faculty research productivity, particularly in relation to time allocation and strongly correlated institutional support factors. I examine existing theories of research productivity in a novel setting to provide new insights and clarify causal ambiguity in the factors influencing research productivity. I use the striving research university context to address two general topics in times of institutional change: the interaction of individual characteristics and institutional factors in promoting faculty research productivity and the precise relationship between faculty time allocation and research productivity. I argue that, in order to examine research productivity across classifications of institutions, we must consider separately the factors that determine faculty time allocation to research and the productivity of time spent on research. Results forthcoming.

Additionally, I have an active research area in computer science education and STEM graduate education, with an emphasis on research preparation, online graduate education, master's degrees, and ethics training in STEM.

My research has received several awards: My paper, "How Prior Experience and Self-Efficacy Shape Graduate Student Perceptions of an Online Learning Environment in Computing," won the 2019 Chih Foundation Award, given to the top paper in Engineering, Computer Science, or Health Sciences by a Georgia Tech Ph.D. student. My proceedings paper at the 2022 American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference, "Social responsibility attitudes among undergraduate computer science students: an empirical analysis," won Best Paper in both the Engineering Ethics Division and Program Interest Council 1 and was named as one of the top five papers out of 1,752 presented at the conference (Kreth, Schiff, Lee, Zegura, & Borenstein, 2022).  I have also been supported by NSF SciSIP, in the form of a Student Scholar Travel Award.

Below are a list of my peer-reviewed publications and professional reports. Private share copies of my publications are available upon request.


Journal Articles:

 

1. Ruthotto, I., Kreth, Q., & Melkers, J. (2021). Entering or Advancing in the IT Labor Market: The Role of an Online Graduate Degree in Computer Science. The Internet and Higher Education.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2021.100820 

 

2. Ruthotto, I., Kreth, Q., Stevens, J., Trively, C., & Melkers, J. (2020). Lurking and participation in the virtual classroom: The effects of gender, race, and age among graduate students in computer science. Computers & Education.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.103854 

 

3. Kreth, Q., Spirou, M. E., Budenstein, S., & Melkers, J. (2019). How Prior Experience and Self-Efficacy Shape Graduate Student Perceptions of an Online Learning Environment in Computing. Computer Science Education, 29(4).  https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2019.1601459 

 

Reviewed Conference Proceedings:

 

1. Kreth, Q., Schiff, D. S., Lee, J., Zegura, E., & Borenstein, J. (2022, August), Social responsibility attitudes among undergraduate computer science students: an empirical analysis. Proceedings paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. https://peer.asee.org/41369

 

Book Chapters:

 

1. Melkers, J., Woolley, R., & Kreth, Q. (2023). Research Funding and Careers: Individual and Contextual Factors. In Lepori, B., Jongbloed, B., & Hicks, D. (Eds.). Handbook of Public Research Funding. Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/emyb3

 

2. Kreth, Q., Schiff, D.S., Lee, J., Borenstein, J., & Zegura, E. Social Responsibility and Ethics in STEM Education: The State of the Field. (2023). In Hildt, E., Laas, K., Miller, C., & Brey E. (Eds.). Building Inclusive Ethical Cultures in STEM. Springer.


Reports and Program Evaluations:

 

1. Borenstein, J., Kreth, Q., Lee, J., Schiff, D., & Zegura, E. (2022). Measuring Personal and Professional Responsibility Attitudes Among Georgia Tech Undergraduates. Atlanta, GA: Georgia Institute of Technology.

 

2. Melkers, J., Kreth, Q., Singhania, R., & Wall, J. (2019). External Evaluation: The Kentucky EPSCoR Project: Powering the Bioeconomy for a Sustainable Future: Annual Evaluation Report: Year 5. Atlanta, GA: Kentucky NSF EPSCoR.

 

3. Melkers, J. & Kreth, Q. (2018). External Evaluation: The Kentucky EPSCoR Project: Powering the Bioeconomy for a Sustainable Future: Annual Evaluation Report: Year 4. Atlanta, GA: Kentucky NSF EPSCoR.

 

4. DeMillo, R., Ferri, B., Baker, N., Cozzens, S., Herazy, J., Hoeting, M., Isbell, C., Jacobs, L., Potts, C., Clough, W., Selingo, J., Anderson, P., Barchers, C., Barke, R., Bishop, C., Blum, T., Bramblett, S., Butera, R., Coyle, E., Cummins, M., Curtis, J., DeStefano, L., Forest, C., Gazi, Y., ​Goel, A., Harmon, S., Henry, A., Holloway, S., Jenkins, B., Kim, J., Kingsley, G., Kreth, Q., Le Doux, J., Lefton, L., Ludovice, P., Nair-Reichert, U., Newstetter, W., Overby, E., Reallf, M. L., Rizwan, M., Schatz, M., Sivakumar, R., Spencer, C., Wang, B., Webster, D., Weinsheimer, J., & Zegura, E. (2018). Deliberate Innovation, Lifetime Education: Final Report of the Commission on Creating the Next in Education. Atlanta, GA: Georgia Institute of Technology Provost’s Office.

 

5. Melkers, J., Kreth, Q., Spirou, M. E., & Budenstein, S. (2017). External Evaluation: Georgia Institute of Technology Online Master of Science in Computer Science Program: Outcomes of Online Graduate Education for Women. Atlanta, GA: Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing.

 

6. Melkers, J. & Kreth, Q. (2017). External Evaluation: The Kentucky EPSCoR Project: Powering the Bioeconomy for a Sustainable Future: Annual Evaluation Report: Year 3. Atlanta, GA: Kentucky NSF EPSCoR.

 

7. Melkers, J., Kreth, Q., & St. Clair, R. (2016). External Evaluation: The Kentucky EPSCoR Project: Powering the Bioeconomy for a Sustainable Future: Annual Evaluation Report: Year 2. Atlanta, GA: Kentucky NSF EPSCoR.