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Abstract The purpose of this research paper is to explore how undergraduate engineering students make choices after they identify a new major interest. Despite an understanding that students' interests are dynamic and include a variety of developmental phases, interest is often examined at one time point and for a singular major or discipline. This work seeks to take a broader longitudinal approach to engineering students' changing interests, the choices they make, and the pathways they follow after identifying a new major interest. This phenomenologically guided study uses focus groups to explore the experiences of a cohort of 32 undergraduate engineering students during their first four or six semesters. Directed content analysis was used to identify four main pathways participants followed as they made decisions around new disciplinary interests. These findings extend current interest work by treating it as a dynamic construct and evaluating it with a finer, disciplinary approach.
Scalaro et al. (Wed,) studied this question.