Doctoral students face unique challenges that require dedicated support services to help them successfully complete their studies and graduate. With the proper resources to help lessen these challenges, doctoral students take a shorter time to complete their degree and are less likely to drop out before completing. The purpose of this study was to explore the challenges doctoral students at a southwestern Hispanic-serving research institution, identified as BHSI, faced and the resources they used to alleviate those challenges. It captured the details of their struggles and the support they said they needed. The results of this study serves as a starting point for creating a needs assessment plan for graduate student support services, highlighting resources that were used and those that need to be increased or established. To achieve that purpose, a survey was created to gather data to answer three research questions: (1) What are some of the biggest challenges doctoral students say they face at BHSI and how are they affected by them? (2) What resources do BHSI doctoral students use or want to use to help minimize these challenges and what do they think about them? (3) What additional resources and support do BHSI doctoral students recommend to improve the institution's services? This dissertation used a non-traditional format, Integrated Article Dissertation (IAD) and included two articles: one for the literature review and one for the findings. The purpose of the literature review was to survey the existing literature to identify what unique challenges doctoral students encounter and what support services are provided to help them manage these challenges. The remaining chapters (1, 3 and 5) were similar in scope and purpose to a traditional dissertation format. The literature review drew upon the body of research studies about doctoral students as well as three graduate student development frameworks. The survey, conducted in spring 2022, collected information from open-ended questions asking doctoral students about the challenges they grappled with and the resources they drew upon to help them. The 89 participants provided detailed descriptions of their struggles and the various supports they used to help them cope. The literature review design used a literature review/research study (LR/RS) approach was an interactive data collection and analysis process that continued until data saturation concerning challenges and resources available was achieved. The LR/RS also provided the structure to integrate three graduate student development frameworks into one holistic doctoral student development process model. A qualitative descriptive survey research study design was used because it was important to the researcher to forefront the doctoral students' experiences in their own words. This type of design provides the least amount of interpretation by the researcher of the participant's own words about their experienced reality. It becomes the researcher's task to faithfully consolidate and authentically communicate this reality. With the LR/RS, the integrated doctoral student development process model was missing democratic pedagogy, an essential component that today's doctoral students expect from their educational experiences. The concept of alimentar embodied the elements of critical, engaged and caring pedagogies and was added to the final holistic model. For the survey results, the data provided by the doctoral students were rich and detailed. For this dissertation, the findings focused on two overarching themes, mental health and personal agency, which emerged across the challenges and resources used. COVID was another pervasive theme that negatively impacted the doctoral student's ability to deal with challenges and obtain resources. The new integrated student development process model provides common language and structure for future researchers to use when studying and discussing doctoral students. The identified challenges and resources available provided a research-based foundation for the survey and will be useful for institutions to similarly examine their own students and assess the effectiveness of their support system. The data from the survey reflects other studies done on the challenges doctoral students struggle with. More importantly, it provides a platform for the students from BHSI to share their experiences in their own words, in the hopes that they are used as a basis for making changes to the support services being provided or that are seen as critical by the students to successfully obtain their doctoral degree. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]