Scholarships and Internships
Career Options
A chemical engineering degree will provide a wide range of potential career choices. Employers of all kinds seek the analytical and problem-solving skills developed by chemical engineers. Few career choices offer equal rewards and challenges that place chemical engineers among the highest paid professionals.
A major role of the chemical engineer is the development and operation of chemical processing plants and equipment in those plants. Ch Es serve a variety of functions, including use of software to plan the design of a plant, development of the software that is used to plan the design, securing of the equipment, coordinating construction, and supervising plant operations.
Chemical engineers are usually involved in the research and development. Chemical engineers who are knowledgeable about a company or product troubleshoot ways to improve plant operations. Becoming a successful troubleshooter requires a thorough understanding of the process and equipment, the ability to apply chemical engineering fundamentals to problem solving, and advanced data interpretation skills. The skills that permit chemical engineers to work on a plant floor can also help them transition to a boardroom career . Many Ch Es use their creative troubleshooting abilities and advanced interpersonal skills to advance on the corporate management ladder.
Often a Ch E's special knowledge of a process or product leads to a consulting career, where one may work with several companies within an industry. A Ch E may take the knowledge learned over a career into the classroom and pass it along to the next generation of chemical engineers as a member of a faculty. Ch Es who develop strong communication skills may enjoy a supplemental occupation as a technical writer or author.
Ch E specializations
Not every Ch E is a generalist in the field. Many choose a specific career path, develop an area of expertise, or serve a single purpose on a team. Some of the currently more prominent areas of specialization include:
- Biochemical engineering. This specialization involves the studiy of the chemical processes that occur natural in plants and animals. Food companies hire chemical engineers to improve crop yields by developing safer pest control products for farmers and distributors. Utility companies employ chemical engineers who examine ways to dispose of waste more efficiently while delivering supplies of clean drinking water to challenging locations. Pharmaceutical companies are exploring mechanisms for producing the next generation of drugs by engineering biochemical processes.
- Food engineering. As the world's population increases, researchers are looking for new and better ways to improve the quality and extend the life of food product. Food chemical engineers also try to make crops more disease resistant and safer to eat.
- Petroleum and petrochemical engineering. Petroleum is a finite resource, so chemical engineers constantly seek better ways to find and extract oil and natural gas. Oil companies deploy teams of chemical engineers to existing plants and refineries to improve production yields from dwindling fossil fuel deposits. Chemical engineers also travel to new drilling locations to help teams of scientists develop better ways to tap previously overlooked sources of oil and gas. At the same time, chemical engineers also search for safer and more efficient methods of developing oil-based products. By integrating smart production methods at the site of the drilling or during the refining process, chemical engineers have discovered ways to create useful products by recycling waste elements.
- Process control. Computers have become more important to just about every profession. Chemical engineering is no exception. Engineers oversee the quality-control portions of product development, such as temperature and liquid levels in processing tanks. Process control specialists improve production to a diverse array of industries, ranging from ice cream production to plastics manufacturing.
- Pharmaceutical. In conjunction with medical researchers, chemical engineers help design and operate the equipment that produces life-enhancing drugs. Chemical engineers specialize in taking the concepts of new drugs from the lab to the factory floor by discovering ways to scale these new inventions. Over time, their efforts produce medicine that costs less for consumers and can be made more efficiently in facilities around the world.
- Production. Chemical and manufacturing plants require professionals to oversee their equipment and processes. Some employers use chemical engineers to maintain production levels or to advise in the purchase and layout of the equipment.
These classifications represent the traditional areas of specialization; however, in the last two decades, new worlds have opened up to the Ch E, and include:
- Biomedical and Biomolecular engineering
- Biotechnology
- Ceramics
- Chemical process modeling
- Chemical reaction engineering
- Computational fluid dynamics
- Distillation Design
- Electrochemistry
- Environmental engineering
- Materials science
- Microfluidics
- Mineral Processing
- Nanotechnology
- Plastics Engineering
- Polymers
- Process design and development
- Pulp and paper manufacture
- Semiconductor device fabrication
- Separation processes
- Crystallization processes
- Distillation processes
- Membrane processes
- Textile engineering
- and the many unit operations of chemical engineering
NMSU Chemical Engineers beyond Las Cruces
Chemical Engineers from NMSU are in high demand from employers around the nation. Graduates of the NMSU Chemical Engineering undergraduate program have recently found employment at:
- Air Products
- Aramco
- Archer Daniels Midland
- Cardinal Health
- ChevronPhillips
- ConocoPhillips
- Dow Chemical
- DuPont
- Eastman Chemical Company
- ExxonMobil
- Fina
- Fluor
- Haliburton
- Hovensa
- IBM Integrated Device Technologies
- Intel
- Lockheed Martin
- Los Alamos National Lab
- Mobil Oil
- Motorola
- NASA
- Nestle Purina
- Procter and Gamble
- Procter & Gamble
- Rayethon
- Shell Oil
- Sumitomo
- Texaco
- Union Carbide
- Weatherford International
- Western Refining
- Westinghouse
Graduates of the advanced degree programs (M.S. and Ph.D.) have recently gone on to work at:
- AFRL
- Arthur Daniels Midland
- ChevronPhillips
- Clemson (post-doc)
- Dow Chemical
- Mead-Westvaco
- Micron
- Mutah University (faculty positions)
- Nestle Purina
- Pearson
- Rutgers (post-doc)
- Southern Illinois University (research faculty)
- University of Jordan (faculty postion)
- Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez (faculty position)