2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The concept of “professional identity” often encompasses a mixture of technical skills, reflective practice, interpersonal networks, and self-directed learning [1]. As undergraduate students form their professional identity, they build a crucial bridge between their academic learning and their post-graduation careers [2]. This Work-In-Progress paper examines the process of professional identity formation of undergraduate makerspace staff at University X, a liberal arts and R1 research institution that serves 18,000+ undergraduates across a diverse set of disciplines. The experiences of two different groups of student staff, each at a different stage in identity formation, were reviewed. The first group consisted of newly hired staff, often first-year or sophomore students, who were onboarding and participating in a peer-led training program. The second group contained experienced staff leaders, often junior or senior students, who developed and led the training program for new staff.

These two groups work collaboratively as they develop their professional practice as makerspace staff through the training program used at Makerspace X, which is structured on a “community of practice” model [3]. Both new and experienced staff work together on makerspace projects in different tool areas, from digital fabrication to textiles to woodworking. Over the summer of 2024, a small group of experienced student staff restructured these projects to address authentic challenges that they encountered in their day-to-day responsibilities as makerspace educators. During the Fall of 2024, experienced staff used the redeveloped projects to share their professional experience, foster collegial discussion, and train new staff using innovative teaching methods like collaborative troubleshooting scenarios. This paper explores the impact of this redesign on professional identity formation at Makerspace X through the analysis of qualitative interviews and survey data.

[1] F. Trede, R. Macklin, and D. Bridges, "Professional identity development: A review of the higher education literature," Studies in Higher Education, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 365-384, 2012.

[2] M. Tomlinson and D. Jackson, "Professional identity formation in contemporary higher education students," Studies in Higher Education, vol. 46, no. 4, pp. 885-900, 2021.

[3] J. Lave and E. Wenger, "Legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice," in Supporting Lifelong Learning, pp. 121-136. Routledge, 2001.