Faculty experiences of boundary crossing in an interdisciplinary degree program

This paper examines the experiences of faculty members involved in a newly established interdisciplinary engineering degree program at a European university. The program, launched in 2021, aims to equip future engineering professionals with a broad understanding of technology and human literacy by integrating concepts from various disciplines. Our focus is on boundary crossing, a key competence necessary for innovation and addressing complex societal challenges. Through inductive thematic analysis of our interview data, we discovered that the interdisciplinary program was seen as an important and relevant educational entity and working in the program was motivating. However, institutional boundaries–described as silos in our data–hindered active boundary crossing and transformation into new practices. Our findings show that successful boundary crossing requires continuous work at the boundary, and the role of brokers, people who are involved in multiple practices simultaneously, is both challenging and essential for the boundary to remain productive.