Background: The retention of traditionally underserved students remains a pressing problem across graduate engineering programs. Disciplinary differences in graduate engineering identity provide a lens to investigate students' experiences and can pinpoint potential opportunity structures that support or hinder progress based on social and personal identities. Purpose: This study investigates the impact of discipline, gender, race/ ethnicity, advisor relationship, and years in a program on graduate engineering identity variability.Methods: Cross-sectional survey data from a national sample of doctoral engineering students were analyzed with multilevel modeling. Multilevel modeling measured the differences at the individual and discipline levels for graduate engineering identity and the domains of engineer, researcher, and scientist. Independent variables included were gender, advisor relationship score, race/ethnicity, and years in a program. Results: The engineer identity sub-construct of recognition significantly varied among engineering disciplines. Traditionally underserved students (i.e., Women and minoritized racial/ethnic groups) expressed lower engineering recognition levels, with this relationship varying based on discipline.Overall, our model explained 30% of the variation in engineering recognition among disciplines. Conclusions:The disciplinary variation in graduate engineering identity combined with the significance of gender and race/ethnicity indicates traditionally underserved students do not experience equivalent opportunity structures compared with their well-represented peers. Modifying traditional opportunity structures to serve students better may provide the needed changes to engage and retain traditionally underserved populations.

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Background: Degree completion rates for doctoral engineering students remain stagnant at levels lower than necessary to meet national and global workforce needs. Increasing degree completion can improve opportunities for individuals and provide the human resources needed to address engineering challenges.Purpose/Hypothesis: In this work, we measure the association of engineering identity variables with degree completion intentions for students who have persisted in doctoral study. We add to existing literature that suggests the importance of advisor and peer relationships, and the number of years in the doctoral program.Design/Method: We use data collected via a national cross-sectional survey of doctoral engineering students, which included measures of social and professional identities, graduate school experiences, and demographics. Surveys were collected from 1754 participants at 98 US universities between late 2017 and early 2018. The analyses reported here use multiple regression to measure associations with engineering doctoral degree completion intentions. Results: Research interest and scientist performance/competence are individually associated with degree completion intentions in students who are persisting in doctoral study. Overall, graduate engineering identity explains significant portions of variation in degree completion intentions (9.5%) beyond advisor and peer relationship variables and the number of years in graduate programs. Conclusions: Researcher interest and scientist performance/competence may be key opportunities to engage doctoral student engineering identity to improve degree completion rates. Accordingly, institutions can foster students' interest in research and build their confidence in their scientific competence to support students as they complete the doctoral degree.