VIRTUAL: Applying Education
Abstract
University environments offer unique challenges for faculty and students, intermingling top-down bureaucracy with bottom-up workloads. PhD candidates are especially impacted by push-pull dynamics, as they bridge student and staff association throughout their candidacy. Unfortunately, rather than benefitting from this dual categorization, candidates often encounter a double standard, being identified as neither group, resulting in well-being detriment and a lack of belonging that exacerbates loneliness. Pre-pandemic, postgraduate students were six times as likely to experience depression, resulting in a mental health crisis (Evans et al., 2018) and “PhDepression” (Gin et al., 2021, p. 1). It is imperative their well-being be prioritized to uplift that of themselves, the students they lead, the supervisors they follow, and the universities they inhabit. Well-being science offers Self-Determination Theory (SDT) (Deci & Ryan, 2008; Ryan & Deci, 2017) as a means of designing for flourishing. Doing so precipitates Ryan et al.’s “living well” (2008, p. 139) in addition to intrinsic motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000), enhanced performance and work quality for impact, and trust (Frei & Morriss, 2020). This paper furthers novel eudaemonic design scholarship as a means of flourishing-supportive environmental curation and intentional praxis (Mikus, 2023). By ensuring SDT’s three tenets are satisfied, it proposes PhD crafting as a take on job crafting scholarship (Dutton & Wrzesniewski, 2020; 2001) to empower doctoral candidates to curate need-suiting environments. By presenting an Australian female-focused doctoral team perspective, the authors examine vulnerable journey periods and outline PhD crafting as a parallel inside-out strategy to combat inequities, including Tall Poppy Syndrome (Billan, 2023; Billan & Humber, 2018)—when high-performing women such as PhD candidates are cut down rather than recognized for achievement—and enhance overall well-being.
Jenna Mikus is a strategic advisor, specializing in spatial and organizational health and well-being. Leveraging her background in engineering, architecture, and business, Jenna’s primary objective is to cultivate flourishing well-being using an approach she adopted (from philosophy and psychology), adapted (for the built environment), and coined as Eudaemonic Design. As a PhD Candidate at QUT and as Managing Partner of Eudae Group, her research and work inform inclusive demographic engagement to curate equitable, empowering spaces and circumstances that promote people’s best selves.