(643e) An International Summer School for Undergraduate Chemical Engineers: The Imperial College Experience

The Imperial College Chemical Engineering Summer School programme is provided to international sophomore, junior and senior students studying chemical engineering and offers a schedule combining extensive laboratory experiments, a rig-building team exercise and a Pilot Plant project. The students are trained using a state-of-the-art carbon capture pilot plant which provides students with an experience that is as close to real industrial work as practical. As well as learning how to start up, stop and run efficiently pilot scale chemical engineering plant, the students become familiar with plant safety, shift handover protocols, permits to work, working is small shift teams, alarm management, PID diagrams and many other industrially relevant procedures. Summer school students will also take part in a bespoke range of short and long undergraduate laboratory experiments based on our current MEng. curriculum during their six week programme.

The paper will review the development of the summer school curriculum at Imperial College over the past 5 years, feedback from students and faculty from cohorts from 3 US colleges, and the future opportunities for summer schools as a way of enriching the studentâ??s academic and cultural learning experiences. Comments on the use of UTA- undergraduate teaching assistants, group laboratory exercises and the overall importance of hands on teaching and learning will be discussed in the context of the current trend towards virtual and computer aided teaching.