Identity Work: Developing a Grounded Theory of Identity Negotiation in Early-Career Engineering Faculty

Background: Early-career faculty members encounter many challenges as they transition into academia, such as navigating an onslaught of new responsibilities, identifying sources for support, and establishing oneself as a faculty member. This process of identity formation is complex and has been scarcely explored in engineering. Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose is to gain a more holistic understanding of the identity formation process among early-career engineering faculty members as they transition into academic institutional roles. Design/Method: We adopted a constructivist grounded theory approach to analyze eight semi-structured interviews conducted with early-career engineering faculty members at a large R1 institution in the Mid-Atlantic region of the US. Results: We developed the Negotiating and Re-Negotiating the Professional Identity Boundaries of Early-Career Engineering Faculty (NPIB) model that captures the ongoing, iterative development of early-career engineering faculty as they negotiate their personal and professional identities and the strategies they use to do so. Conclusions: The NPIB model offers a comprehensive framework that links various dimensions of faculty identities within engineering. It serves as a guide for researchers, early-career faculty, administrators, and professional development staff in developing more effective support structures for faculty transitions.