For many students, first-year engineering (FYE) courses are their first formal introduction to the content and practices associated with becoming an engineer. At this stage, many students' interests and conceptualizations of the discipline are still developing. The content of the firstyear courses plays a significant formative role in the evolution of this understanding. Many firstyear courses are designed with this in mind, placing an emphasis on core engineering skills like teamwork, and taking a project from conceptualization to completion. Many also construct these project experiences around traditional engineering skill sets like programming or mechanical systems. These skills are important, but place students who had no access to them prior to arriving at their university at a disadvantage in their teams. To be as flexible as possible, students must be prepared for both technical and creative projects. Creative design can be incorporated into technically focused projects, but it ultimately may be more effective to include creative design as a foundational aspect of the project instead. To explore this, an alternative project was developed with a focus on an unorthodox topic: musical instruments. One objective of this design was to encourage students to consider a broad variety of future paths within engineering. One question that this alternative project poses, however, is how students in the first-year program will be able to make connections between the project and their engineering paths. The purpose of this qualitative investigation is to examine how first-year engineering students at a large public Mid-Atlantic university describe their engagement and interest in an engineering design project with a nontraditional theme. Data for this study are drawn from student responses to a collection of short answer questions as well as several reflection assignments completed during the project. In combination, these encompass the affective, behavioral, and cognitive dimensions of student engagement. Together, these three dimensions provide a comprehensive view of how students engage with the project itself, their teammates, and others in the class. Furthering the understanding of how students view and engage with a nontraditional project may expand options for curriculum design in first-year programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]