Becoming a professional is a core identity we develop as we fully mature. This identity is developed quickly as one progresses through college curricula, as this is likely the first major exposure an individual will have to the profession and its members. A well-developed professional identity correlates with many positive characteristics of successful students, such as high resilience and low anxiety. This work in progress presents initial results from an ongoing interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) on the experiences of computer science students developing their professional com-puter scientist identities. The individual discussed in this single case (n=l) analysis was a fifth-semester computer science major enrolled in an Rl, Southeastern, land-grant University. In this work, we discuss themes of his experience and the implications of connecting his story to his peers in the complete work.

This WIP paper discusses the significance of inter-disciplinary programs in computing, highlighting their role in addressing complex issues and attracting students to universities. It introduces the MIDFIELD project, which collects course records from multiple universities in the USA, enabling the analysis of course overlaps between interdisciplinary degrees and their parent fields. The study aims to inform curriculum design and promote interdisciplinary majors, particularly between computing and other STEM fields, by identifying shared courses. Such initiatives are crucial for diversifying the computing work-force and bridging the gap between students” experiences and computer science fundamentals.