Work in Progress: Global Engineering Perspectives Scholars Program

2021

In the last decades, the chemical engineering field has expanded and now encompasses other diverse fields such as pharmaceutical, renewable energy, nanoparticles, food products, and safety. However, the chemical engineering curriculum has not evolved at the same pace. Thus, the gap between industry needs and competencies developed in chemical engineering (CHE) programs has grown. To adequately address this problem, the authors' goal is to synergize industry-student-academia and to enculturate classrooms with industry. Implementation of this model is particularly essential in the early years of the curriculum. As the first step, the authors aim to design and incorporate up-to-date industry problems into "Materials and Energy Balance" as a course assignment. The authors of this paper have been working with industry mentors from various areas of the chemical engineering field to design up-to-date application-based problems/projects for the selected CHE class. Five industr...

1997 Annual Conference Proceedings

This paper describes two demonstration experiments: an automatic drip coffee maker and a manually operated reverse osmosis unit, that have been used to show the basic principles of chemical engineering processes to high school and multidisciplinary freshman engineering audiences. The demonstrations are integrated into a combined lecture/lab format and also can be utilized at various points in the curriculum as well as to pre-college students. The value of demonstrations and follow-up mini-laboratory experiments to reinforce the hands-on approach to engineering education will be mentioned. A particular focus of the paper is how chemical engineering principles are introduced into lower level courses through demonstrations and how the basic principles of process engineering can be taught to a multidisciplinary student group. These presentations and experiments are drawn from past experience and those of this present year with our new multidisciplinary Freshman Engineering Clinic course at Rowan University.

https://www.ijrrjournal.com/IJRR_Vol.4_Issue.3_March2017/Abstract_IJRR003.html, 2017

The chemical engineer has to deal with various interdisciplinary subjects such as mechanical engineering, environmental engineering, biotechnology etc. Many important subjects such as mass transfer, heat transfer, process engineering and fluid flow operations involve time consuming and rigorous computations. The equations in heat and material balance, sand transport phenomena in non-stationary conditions are mostly having non analytical solutions. Also many experimental methods can be made more interesting and easy to understand by using innovative and different teaching methods. Software like MATLAB, virtual laboratory can be a great help in understanding the chemical engineering concepts.

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings

He received a B.S. Engineering degree from Michigan Tech in 1982 and has also worked as a Training Specialist, Project Engineer, and Project Manager. He has over 25 years experience instructing and coordinating Unit Operations and Plant Operations Laboratory, implementing distributed control and data acquisition systems, and designing pilot-scale processing equipment.

2014

Chemical engineering education is facing a growing disconnect between a curriculum focused primarily on “unit operations ” (e.g., heat exchangers and distillation columns) and faculty research that has increasingly emphasized nano- and bio-technology. This discrepancy was recognized by an NSF-sponsored Frontiers in Chemical Engineering Education initiative, recommending a move from the macroscopic, unit-operations educational approach to instead teach from the molecular point of view in a bottom-up fashion. The challenge, however, is to continue to serve the more conventional chemical and petroleum industries while instituting this change. At USC we have developed the two-pronged approach of utilizing (1) a recently-created nanotechnology course-work emphasis within the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, and (2) vertically- and horizontally-integrated “degree projects ” consisting of nano or bio laboratory modules in successive chemical engineering courses tha...

2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings

is a professor of chemical engineering at Oregon State University. He currently has research activity in areas related to thin film materials processing and engineering education. He is interested in integrating technology into effective educational practices and in promoting the use of higher level cognitive skills in engineering problem solving. Koretsky is a six-time Intel Faculty Fellow and has won awards for his work in engineering education at the university and national levels.

2002

Chemical Engineering education faces new challenges that need to be addressed by chemical engineering educators. The dynamically changing learning environment and that of teaching require the teacher to relax and contemplate. Among all community sectors, educators must be number one in sniffing the smell of change, be willing to adapt, and later be capable to adopt new pedagogical findings, methods and techniques, and means. In brief, the notion of revolutionizing chemical engineering education does not necessarily mean that we should ignore the pillars of it. On the contrary, we should expand in a way to also tackle the latest critical socio-technical issues both on the stem (roots) and branches level. The tree of chemical engineering education has to grow in height (chance to explore new areas and also see the sun) above the ground and have more branches (industrial applications to be tailored to chemical engineering), as well. A strong tree with green leaves and fruits emanates from well-irrigated roots. On the one hand, we need to contemplate about our ancestors in terms of re-visiting fundamental science topics. On the other hand, we need to stay updated amid "continuously changing" learning and teaching environment as far as the latest pedagogical findings, domain knowledge, technology for teaching (i.e., means of dissemination and communication), web-based online resources, lab equipment and tools, relevant software, computational techniques, and programing languages are concerned. Topics like public awareness, soft skill, and innovation and entrepreneurship were also highlighted.

Engineering Leaders Conference 2014 on Engineering Education, 2015

Engineering education cannot expect to meet the demands of a global, diverse, knowledge-society without addressing a well-established issue of student recruitment and retention. The dropout rate for engineering students is around 40% as shown in various studies of a national scope. This retention issue is particularly prevalent for freshman students, such as in general chemistry. Indicators suggest that lower-division engineering curriculum is not based upon the authentic practice of engineers, thus, not representative of the profession and not attractive to the widest possible population of students. To address this issue, the University of Florida is conducting a project to transform the freshman chemistry curriculum for engineering students to a more contextually relevant and engaging experience with rich context of workplace engineering (Transforming Chemistry with Cognitive Apprenticeship for Engineers-ChANgE Chem). This transformed curriculum situates energy and environmental as fundamental organizing principles in practical engineering problems, communicated as human-interest stories. Based on cognitive apprenticeship, we have developed a sequence of activities that emulate and make explicit, an engineer's way of thinking, knowing and working. In addition, we support student success with design elements that engage deep learning strategies that embody our understanding of effective learning. Organized around the three overarching themes of Design, Develop, and Test, this unique approach creates new learning materials and teaching strategies, develops faculty expertise, implements an educational innovation and assesses student achievement. This transformative curriculum contributes new knowledge about how to design for recruitment and retention, and the project advances our understanding of how people learn chemistry and develop the skills for addressing engineering design problems. This presentation will discuss the framework and creation of engineering mini-projects that complement the major chemistry lecture topics, and discuss the progress and challenges of implementing the mini-projects in weekly recitation sections.

2002 Annual Conference Proceedings

This paper describes a project-based learning environment for a first course in Thermodynamics. Students are challenged through a strong emphasis on design projects which expand the boundary of their thermodynamics knowledge through the integration of fluid mechanics and heat transfer fundamentals. Design projects range from determining the blower size of an automotive HVAC system, to adept selection of nozzle diameter for a jet engine at a specified speed. These design projects are used as the platform for students to solidify their knowledge of thermal fluid systems. The authors provide their personal journey in developing a project-based and design-driven thermodynamics course that show promise for the design integration throughout the Energy Systems Thread. Formal and informal assessment measures conducted on student achievement of educational outcomes are also presented. 1. INTRODUCTION Creating a project based learning environment for engineering students has been the subject of investigation at a number of universities. In a recent study by Kettering University Core Engineering Team (CET) [1] , a survey of engineering curricula at other universities was carried out. Reviewed universities included all of Kettering's Association of Independent Technological Universities (AITU) peers, Michigan universities with major engineering programs, and universities participating in the Foundation Coalition. This review [2-6] found that many universities, including Kettering, continue to offer relatively traditional core curricula. Nontraditional or innovative programs are in place at a number of universities, but relatively few of these have been implemented for all students. Most remain in an experimental stage and are offered to only a subset of the students and taught only by interested faculty. Moreover, even programs with non-traditional elements retain in one form or another the traditional engineering core topics of differential, integral, and vector calculus, differential equations, physics (mechanics and electromagnetics) and chemistry. Some of the relatively common elements of innovative core curricula that appeared in one or more of CET's proposals were: (a) a common, interdisciplinary Introduction to Engineering course; (b) a selection of discipline-specific Introduction to Engineering courses offered by the various engineering departments; and (c) integration of engineering applications into core mathematics and science courses.