In this article I report on a unique tertiary level bilingual graduate program in Southwest Texas where the content as well as the form of implementation are based on an additive model of bilingualism. The analysis focuses on how bilingualism and bilingual professional identity are conceptualized by the participants in this community of practice relating the insiders' views to the sociohistorical and political landscape where the program is developing. The issues of bilingualism and identity are approached from a social perspective on language and learning (Gee, 2002; Halliday, 1978; Lemke, 1995; Wenger, 1998). Through the analysis of data collected by way of naturalistic observations, open-ended interviews, and collection of documents, I explore how this community develops criteria to construct its bilingual identity and how different participants react to this new identity. In the article I show the variety of meanings and orientations to bilingualism and Spanish that participants negotiate in the construction of identities.