2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Students entering interdisciplinary programs often encounter uncertainty regarding the legitimacy of their chosen field, ambiguous degree nomenclature, and unclear career pathways which can obstruct the development of a coherent engineering identity. A key contributing factor for these challenges is the misalignment between traditional conceptions of engineering and the evolving nature of work within these emerging domains. This paper presents findings from a longitudinal qualitative study examining the evolving identity formation of two undergraduate students engaged in a long-term undergraduate research experience at an R1 university, totaling six interviews with the two students over 9 months. The students are engaged in highly interdisciplinary research related to energy and sustainability, though their academic major is not typically considered core to energy conversations. Through lenses of engineering identity and academic literacies theory, an inductive thematic analysis showed oscillating evolution of participants’ self-perceptions as engineers as they gain research experience. Findings highlight significant structural and cultural barriers testing identity development—here, we employ the terminology of “culture” to include both engineering culture and disciplinary culture, which governs language patterns, values, and self-perceptions. Some notable concerns were a lack of standardized language for skills and roles, insufficient visibility of interdisciplinary fields within mainstream engineering discourse, and a perceived disconnect between interdisciplinary academic training and industry expectations. Our findings highlight a fascinating tension: While involvement in authentic undergraduate research reinforces participants' engineering identities by increasing their sense of competency, at the same time, these students feel uncertain about how interdisciplinary domain knowledge “fits” within their traditional discipline or the broader ecosystem of engineering, causing a sense of marginalization, and amplified uncertainty about post-graduate opportunities. This paper highlights the need to reevaluate how professional development and advising strategies may be altered to better support the identity development of undergraduates in emergent and interdisciplinary disciplines or research experiences.