2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The first year of graduate school can produce great angst in students undertaking a fundamental identity shift from student to researcher [1]. In interdisciplinary programs, acquiring confidence with an additional disciplinary framework and threshold concepts brings additional challenges [2]. Solutions often focus on mentoring [3], but students entering highly interdisciplinary graduate programs may need additional support that helps them integrate the unique challenges faced by students changing or integrating multiple disciplinary backgrounds and identities. We propose that formalizing career path exploration, with an emphasis on surfacing students’ angst about their options and career paths through a professional development course may ease students' transition to their emerging identity(ies). We predict that this may occur by increasing students' sense of agency around their individual professional identity development.

Grounded in identity theory, we use qualitative data analysis strategies to examine multiple artifacts of student coursework across a semester in a professional development course for first year students in a Computational Science graduate program. Specifically, we use thematic analysis and deductive coding across multiple artifacts for one cohort of computational science graduate students. We had previously found evidence of angst in thematic responses to an early course assignment that asked students to describe strengths and weaknesses of computational science careers. Students identified several aspects of computational science career paths that they described as both a strength and a weakness, for example, without a clear understanding of how to resolve that contradiction. When focusing on potential future careers with a computation science degree, students expressed angst about their future as well as conflicting categorization of opportunities and threats of the profession.

In response to these tensions, the instructor developed assignments that were designed to provide students with opportunities to resolve their angst, and our coding of student work and course reflections indicates how students crossed the developmental threshold from angst to agency. Specifically, we find evidence that encouraging students to develop their own agency through a variety of course assignments afforded students the opportunity to develop adaptive perspectives and a sense of control as they navigated troublesome shifts in professional identity. We also found evidence that students felt the program provides a sense of community, autonomy over professional development, and opportunity for exploration and self-discovery. Finally, in students’ final written reflections on the course, we found evidence of increased sense of control over their unique career development path and growth of their mentor network.

We discuss the relevance of these findings for theory on interdisciplinary identity development and design of professional development courses to increase graduate student agency.