(217h) A Career in Education: A Personal Reflection

I am grateful to the AIChE in bestowing upon me the Warren K Lewis Award for Chemical Engineering Education. I consider this award as the most significant professional honor that I have received. This is especially the case because, many years ago, when I embarked on a career in higher education, I set the goal of achieving excellence as an educator as my foremost aim. In receiving this recognition, I take immense satisfaction in feeling that I have achieved that aim.

In pursuing this goal over all these years, I have been very fortunate to have met numerous highly distinguished scholars who mentored and supported me, guiding, influencing, and shaping me into the educator that I eventually became. They have served as exceptional role models and inspired me to assume the same role for my younger colleagues and my students. In fact, their specific impact on me has extended well beyond my pedagogical goals to influence my endeavors in research, professional service, and entrepreneurship. I am privileged to name some of them here: C. C. Chen (my BS advisor), C. Y. Wen (my PhD advisor), L.T. Fan (my post-doc advisor and my cousin), Maurice Bergougnou, Bob Brodkey, John Davidson, Norman Epstein, Daizo Kunii, Norman Li, Charlie Shao-Lee Soo, Barry Tarmy, Chi Tien, Danny I.C. Wang, Jimmy Wei, Mooson Kwauk, and Jack Zakin.

During my career at Ohio State, I have been most fortunate to have worked with a large number of undergraduate students, graduate students and post-doctoral research associates. I have found it gratifying to observe the development of their own individual careers in the years that followed their departure from my lab, whether in industry or academia. I have been privileged to mentor students at other universities where I serve as honorary professor, namely Tsinghua University in China and National Taiwan University in Taiwan. This enrichment that comes with student interaction has also excitingly extended to universities where I spent sabbatical leave including, Cambridge University in UK, Hannover University in Germany, and ETH in Switzerland. One of my goals, in addition to fostering and supporting the learning of the students in my classes, has been to combine the cultivation of the intellects and technical skills of each of my students with the assuredness of a deep commitment to an ethic of professionalism, so that each one of them will be a powerful force to the profession they serve and the society they live in. I am proud to note that many of my advisees have been very successful in academia and industry and their continued success and achievement fills me with gratitude.

I can devote much of the energy needed to pursue my career because of the full support of my wife. Our collective endeavors in exercising our shared passion for education have also affected our children in their choice of professional careers. Both my son and my daughter have established themselves in academia as professors in their respective fields.

A successful educator complements and combines inspiring teaching that effectively delivers classroom material with innovative research, scholarship and leadership, creating knowledge with insights, breakthroughs, and inventions that are ultimately embedded as new learning materials for generations to come and which benefit society at large. In receiving this honor, I am reminded once again of how deeply indebted I am to those who helped to illuminate my path as an educator desirous of impacting the discipline and the profession in a meaningful way, and to my students and younger colleagues who continually make me a better educator. I recognize all of them here with deep and abiding gratitude.