Degree Programs
Undergraduate Information
During its formative years, the Department developed an educational philosophy focused on the student's needs and prepared them for a variety of careers. Underpinning our approach to undergraduate education is a firm commitment to providing a quality program with fundamental science and engineering principles integrated into a curriculum-wide emphasis on design and creative problem solving. Thus, during the first two years, in addition to 12 semester credits of mathematics, 16 credits of chemistry, and 6 credits of physics. The first two years of Chemical Engineering classes are structured to develop the student's problem solving skills and provide a sound basis in mass and energy balances as well as computer programming and applications. In fact, computer skills are developed throughout the four-year program and are introduced in the very first Chemical Engineering class.
Early in the program, the students gain experience with graphics packages, spreadsheets, word processors, high-level structured-language programming, a symbolic equations processor, and an introduction to the Aspen Plus® process simulator. During the junior and senior year, classes in the Department focus on the traditional foundation of chemical engineering and also provide opportunities for the students to explore the emerging frontiers of our discipline. Thermodynamics, reaction kinetics, transport phenomena, staged operations, engineering materials, and a chemical engineering instrumentation laboratory are all taught during the junior year. During the senior year, process control, engineering economics, and 2 additional chemical engineering laboratories are taught. Additional chemistry classes are also a part of the student's final year. Four technical electives selected by the student may come from areas as diverse as advanced materials, biochemical engineering, computer-aided engineering, environmental science and engineering, food science, and waste management. The curriculum includes open-ended design problems throughout, culminating in two capstone process design courses, one each semester of the senior year. In the first design course, students solve individual and small-group design projects. The second design course uses the annual American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) design problem as a final exercise in individual design.
Students completing this curriculum have been trained to be practical, problem solving engineers ready to contribute to industry or continue their education at the graduate level. Many of our students have been nationally recognized for their excellence.