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surv y )ENGINEERING EDUCATIONFOR THE ST CENTURY

Listen to ndustryR ALPH A. B UONOPANENortheastern Uni versity Boston, MA 02115

As chemica l engineering education approaches thecomplete implementation of BETs EngineeringCriteria 2000 in the next few years , much of thefocus in our colleges and un iversities has turned to the mean

ing and measurement of outcomes assessment. Successfulemployment in the chemical industries of the 2 Ist centurywill require that graduates of our chemical engineering programs meet their needs with real-world work experience .

Graduating engineers need to quickly develop an understanding of how the ir work contributes to the business results of a company. The way our graduates speak and presentideas and the way they writ e to communicate re sult s arebecomin g assessab le knowledge bases that industry looksfor. Besides deriving or find ing the prop er chemical engineering equation and cranking out a computer solution toprovide the numerical answer to a problem, industry alsowants chemical engineers to consider the impact of theirwork on the environmen both on people and on business.Communication skills, both oral and written, are not em

phasized enough in today s typical chemical engineeringcurriculum. Chemical engineers need to prepare for the factthat they will spend much more of their time communicatingwith others than they will spend determining an answer tosome engineering problem. It s one thin g to get the correctanswer to an exam problem, but it s another to design something useful that others are going to be involved with andthat peopl e are going to use.

What evidence has been provided to substantiate this callfor change in the education of our chemical engineeringgraduates? The Council for Chemical Research s ( CCR)Educ ation Committee has developed the following C hallenge statement:

The general view is that the scientific research and technicaldevelopment expertise of u graduates is exce llent in bothscience and engineering. Howe ve r, there ex ists in today .Irapidly changing global economy a need fo r a shift offocus fo rthe knowledge workers to an emphasis on traits and skills

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and not j ust content.With this in mind. the Education Committee recommends that

CCR adopt the fo llowing positionso Nell chemists and chemical engineers must have theopportunityfo r a broader exposure to other areas of scienceand engineering to fos ter interdisciplinary and collaborativeresearch. Examples include biological science, po lymerscience. catalysis. physics. environmental science, etc. Thedesired benefit would be that , in f uture employment, thesuccessful graduate has a greater appreciation fo r issuesbroader than the pursuit ofpure research goals.

o So called soft skills must be more strongly incorporatedi l0 the graduate curriculum to allow for the success of thegraduate. It has been repeatedly emphasized thatfa ilure inindustrial positions is more often related to these areas thanto technical expertise. This is true in academic posi tions aswell. These areas include a basic understanding ofethics,the environment, team working. economics, pa tents, andcorporate/university culture.

o Communication skills of all types ora l, written, computer,and group dynamics- must be more heavily stressed.Foreign language skills have gained renewed importan ce inthis respect.

o Bread th of trainin g must be reemphasized to produce agraduate capable ofhandling the divers e and rapidlychanging global world of industry.

o Awa reness of the goals, products, competitors, and areas ofemphasis in industry should be increased in all graduates tobetterfacilitate university/ind ustry interactions as as tobetter prepare those stude nts interested in industrialpositions.

Although this statement was prepared for the Council forChemical Research and thus it contains references to gradu-

Ralph uonopane is Assoctste Prolessor and Chair of Ihe Departmenl ofChemical Engineering al Northeastern University He is a Chemical Engi-neering Program Evaluator for AIChE/ ETand currently chairs the AIChEAdmissions Committee He is also acl ive in CCRand ASEE Ralph receivedhis BSChE MSChE and PhD degrees from Northeastern University Copyrighl ChE Diuision of ASEE 1997

Chemical Engineering Education

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As we in chemica l engine ering education move towardfull implementat ion of ABET Engineeri ng Cri teria 2000, thechanges that are sought appear to be in line with and substantiated by the industrial views presented here. Let us notlose sight of the results we seek to achieve as we focus on theproce ss of provi ding relevant chemical engineering education for the 21st century . 0

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Change the ways in which learning takesplace . Provide more emphasis and opportunity

for so lv ing incomp lete ly specified problems, deciding the data needed , working inand leading prob lem-solving teams, andprese nting and defending results.

Build in more real-world experience byseeking and creating opportunities for industrial input , expecting faculty to obtainindu strial exper ience, and supporting thevalue of co-o p and intern exper iences .

Sac rifice some science/engineering knowledge to achieve a greater overall effectiveness.Dr. Hochgraf also concluded that the

survey results sugges t that industry should

some

some some

very somevery some

v y

v y

very somev y

very somevery somevery some

very somev y greatvery some

very gre tvery littlevery some

moderate littlemoder te somemoder te little

very greatmoder te little

very somemoder te some

very somevery somevery some

moder te little Provide more early training in environ

mental and safety requi rements and prob lems, in reaching and making dec isions, inindustrial structure relating to competitionand eco nomics, and in worki ng in teams.

Inc re ase supe rvisor training to providementoring responsibilities that recognize the long-term impactof ear ly j ob experiences, and to recog nize and solve problemsbefore they deve lop.

Increase industrial experience opportunities for faculty exper iences in industry and for student co-op and intern experiences.

Improve ove rall effective ness by sacrifici ng short-term cos ts toimprove long- term ef fectiveness.

technical wntmg, speaking to an audie nce, presenting papers, and literature searching were most frequently cited ashelpful. In another open-ended question 99 of the supervisors responded that prior work experience is desirable. Thenew hires valued prior work experience as valuable in relat-

ing theori e s and concepts to real-life problems, in solving problems with incomplete data, and teachin g the artof hu

Importallce Preporarioll man interactions. One new hire, a co-opstudent, offere d that co-op experience wasmore valuable than the degree program.Very few responders offe red exce llence,breadth, or depth of technical course workas being helpful.

Dr. Hochgraf concluded that the resultsof the survey sugges t that colleges anduniversitie s should

T LE 1Survey Results

Te hnical Knowledgescienceengineeringconcep tspl nt oper tionsandconrolcomputing computersstatistical experiment l designuse of technic l p tent liter tureenvironmern l s fe tyrequi rements

\ork Skillsjudgingproper timeacquire andretaininformationsetting prioritiesdevelopingplansjudgngperfection neededmeeting scheduled tes

pplication of Knowledgegaheringnecess ry inform tiondefiningthe problemapplyingconcepts toobtainsolutionsapplyingconceptsto business v luereachingworkableresults

TeamInteraction Skillseffectiveness ina teamlearningthroughconsultinggetting cooper tionsupervisingothers

Communication Sk illsexplainingideasandconceptspreparing anddeliveri presentationswritingeffec tive reports

ndependenceoriginatingown projectsworkingindependentlycontinuingto learn develop

ate research and education, it also has significant applicationdirectly to undergraduate chemical engineer ing education.In addit ion to the recent reports from ABET, ASEE, NAE,NAS, and NSF that provided much information for this CCREducation Committee statement, a survey of two large employers of chemical engineers and chem-ists was conducted several years ago.

Dr. Norman N. Hochgraf of ExxonChemical Company (now retired) conducted a survey of technical employees with less than five years experience at Exxon and Dow Chemical. Thesurvey basis included 138 people identified as campus technical hires in R&Dat Exxon and 427 individuals as tech nical hires in central R&D at Dow. Inaddit ion, 102 supe rv iso rs at Exxonwere surveyed. The results of the survey were presented in a sess ion at the17th Annua l Meeting of CCR (Pittsburgh) in October of 1995. The surveyresponse was 68 for Exxo n Chemical and 82 for the Dow employeesand included chemistry, chemical engineering, and other engineeri ng related personnel at all degree levels.Although the Exxon group included52 BS, 25 MS, and 23 PhD degrees and the Dow group had 38 BS,15 MS, and 47 PhD degrees, nosignificant differences were found between the companies, degree levels,disciplines, new hires and supervisors,or researc hers and pl an t tec hni ca lpeople.

The 26 survey questions were thesame for all and were grouped into thesix skill catego ries: Techni cal Knowldge (6), Application of Knowledge

(5) , Work (5), Communication (3),eam/Interaction (4), and Independence (3) . The survey repondents were asked to evaluate both the importance of aarticular skill to theirjob and the degree of their preparationpon entering the work place .The response measures werealues (1-5 ) from none to utmost for Importance, andm very littleto very great for Preparation ; 22 of the

6 skills rated importance greater than preparation (denotedy in Table I). Table I summarizes the survey resu lts.Several open-ended question s were also included in the

urvey. Responses to the question What experiences ortivities in academia were most helpful? were mostly inordance with the responses for the importance/p reparan respon ses. Team interactions to solve comp lex prob

ems, working together, technical communications course,mmer 99