Jessica Deters, Chris Gewirtz, and Marie Paretti

Engineering culture, marked by a strong belief in meritocracy, depoliticization, and technical/social dualism, often adheres to strict disciplinary boundaries and resists socio-political critiques from those outside and within the discipline (Cech, 2014). This paper uses the pillars of disengagement identified by Cech (2014) and the engineering mindsets identified by Riley (2008) interpret the experiences of engineering graduate students in an interdisciplinary graduate program: Disaster Resilience and Risk Management (DRRM).

DRRM is an interdisciplinary graduate program, housed at one land grant university in the mid-Atlantic region, that brings together students and faculty from Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering Education, Business Information Technology, Geosciences, and Urban Affairs and Planning. The program aims to educate interdisciplinary scholars capable of creating disaster resilience in communities and restoring communities impacted by both natural and human-made disasters. More specifically, the program aims to educate change agents who are driven to work towards greater equity in community resilience and recovery. The program operates in the boarderlands of engineering and other disciplines, encouraging students to think across disciplines to solve problems.

Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to explore the research question: In what ways does an interdisciplinary graduate program in disaster resilience and risk management break down or uphold engineering disciplinary boundaries? This research study relies on qualitative interviews conducted with participants after their first year in the graduate program. The paper will examine both the engineering and non-engineering participants in the DRRM program and thus will be able to draw comparisons between how the two groups describe their disciplinary and interdisciplinary identities after their first year in the program.