(528a) Development of Elective Courses for Process Industries Certificate As Recommended By the Industrial Advisory Board

The majority of our chemical engineering graduates find employment at refineries, chemical plants, or industry-related design or services firms in our south Texas region after they graduate. The industrial advisory board for our department, which includes engineers from these same industries, indicated in their 2021 meeting a desire for our chemical engineering graduates to have exposure to some course that relate more directly to activities the new graduates would experience in industry. Based upon this recommendation, our chemical engineering department developed a new certificate (12 course hours) program, which was given the title the Chemical Process Industries certificate. The new certificate program was proposed and approved in Fall 2021, with new elective courses in process safety, sustainability, environmental control of chemical processes, and air pollution control constituting this certificate. Additionally, a course was added in introduction to chemical engineering for non-majors, so that engineering students from outside the major could engage in the certificate program as well.

The department faculty were skeptical at first that there would be sufficient interest amongst our students in discipline-specific elective courses. There are a couple of reasons for this mindset, first because the curriculum for the chemical engineering BS degree requires 130 hours, and second because there have been minimal offerings of elective courses at the undergraduate level in our discipline for a number of years. However, this faculty member has recognized there is some demand for upper-level electives in chemical engineering because some seniors end up needing only 11 hours (12 hours required for full time student status) of required courses for both of their senior year semesters, and because some students look for minors to complete beyond the chemistry and math minors that all chemical engineering majors can readily attain with their BS degree. The first of these elective courses for the new certificate program were offered in the 2022-2023 academic year. In the first and second course offerings (safety course and sustainability course), the enrollment has been 15 and 17 students, respectively, thus confirming that the interest amongst our undergraduate students. The student feedback on the initial offering of these electives has been very positive.