Telling Their Stories: A Narrative Intervention to Support Belonging, Identity, and Persistence in Engineering Students

Engineering programs in the United States continue to struggle with high attrition and limited diversity. This study investigates an unconventional solution: a narrative-based intervention where students write and perform their own engineering stories to build resilience and improve retention. While engineering curricula typically emphasize technical rigor, this research explores how a storytelling intervention influenced undergraduate students’ perceptions of their sense of belonging, professional identity, and persistence. The intervention, implemented across six semesters in diverse engineering disciplines, engaged students in developing and performing personal stories about their engineering journeys. Utilizing inductive thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 17 participants, we investigated how the narrative process influenced student perceptions. Results: Participants reported that the intervention positively influenced their identity development. Most participants reported a strengthened or reaffirmed intention to remain in the field. Our findings suggest that storytelling provided students with a structured way to discuss struggle, connect with peers, and see themselves more clearly as part of engineering. Those shifts may matter for retention, especially for students who otherwise feel isolated.