Dr. Anna M. Zabinski, Oklahoma State PhD in Management Alum, talks about her PhD experience

Hi, my name is Dr. Anna Zabinski. I am an assistant professor here at Illinois State University. I got my bachelor's degree at Georgia State University in Psychology and then I found my home at Oklahoma State University where I finished my PhD in management in 2022.

Oh my gosh that was something that's probably one of my biggest points for why you should come here to OSU to pursue your PhD. The support that OSU gives you as a doctoral student is top tier. I would be hard-pressed to find another program that supports you even further or beyond in the way that OSU does, and part of that is conferences. So if you submit to a conference and you have a paper accepted, then they will support you to go to that conference. Whether that's only AOM or AOM and SMA and SIOP, like you could go to three conferences a year, and our department will sponsor you to go. The nice thing was when we were early in our phases of the program, faculty would kind of bring us in and say "hey, we're trying to put together this Symposium. Can you help assist with this and put it together?" As we kind of pass comps and we're progressing further, you kind of have a bigger role, and well let's try to get a whole paper and I'm going to take the first stab at writing through this paper and my faculty member is going to help me along with this process. So, you see a lot of growth and because conferences happen annually, you get to kind of see that nice progression in yourself.

I primarily worked with Dr. Lisa Lambert. I also worked on a couple of projects with Dr. Lindsey Greco and also Dr. Jeanine Porck. Jeanine and Lindsey and I, I was helping out with a project that was a meta-analysis on identity in the workplace. So looking at how we identify with our organizations, but also with our teams and with our profession. Then with Lisa I worked on a whole variety of projects, from person environment fit, psychological contracts and research methods.

That's a great question. I was pretty fortunate enough that Lisa needed some assistance with a psych contracts paper and it was part of a special issue. We were able to have that published there. Then with Lindsey and Jeanine, just as I was going on the job market, we were able to have that meta-analysis published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

With Lindsey it was kind of as needed. So here's a batch of articles to code. Let's try to get these done within x amount of time, and then come in and kind of touch base. With Lisa, it depended on what the project was and maybe what the deadline was coming up. So if we knew we had a data collection opportunity coming up, we want to make sure all those materials are ready. That we've done a soft launch or a pilot to make sure that everything from typos to perhaps an issue on the Qualtrics side with how it's being presented to participants, all that gets squared away. So I don't know if we necessarily always had a regular standing meeting. I probably lean more just like as needed.

My PhD kind of chapter in my life was really impactful. It set me up on a really strong foundation, not just professionally for my career, and you know here where I am now at Illinois State, or you know further, but also just those connections that I was able to make with people. The friends that I made with my cohort. The connections I made with faculty, going to conferences and meeting people. So even beyond just that OSU Cowboy family, who are the people outside that I've met at SMA that I see every year at SMA or people that I see regularly at AOM. That's the kind of foundation that sets you up for success. Because this career can sometimes be, you know, taxing. Like yeah I got two pubs in my PhD, but there was also more rejections from journals, right? So you have people there to celebrate your wins, but also be there with you to kind of commiserate over those not wins or kind of setback tax on things.

So that's kind of probably the greatest thing about OSU, is not just the, I got the training and I got the degree, but I got really good training and I was able to meet really great people along the way.