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learning in in d u s tr y

This column provides exa mples of cases in which students have gained know ledge, insight, and experience in the practice of chemical engineering while in an industrial setting. Summ er internships and co-o p assignments typify such experiences; however, reports of more unusual cases are also welcom e. Descripti on of the analytical tools used and the skills developed durin g the project should be emphasized. These examples should stimulate inno vative approaches to bring real world tools and experiences back to campus for integration into the curriculum. Please submit manuscripts to Professor W. 1. Koros, Chemica l Engineering Department, University of Texas, Austin, Texas 787 12.

COOPERATIVE EDUCATION
A Key Link Between Industry and Engineers in the Making
T ANYA BRADBURN

2053 21st Street SE, Apt. S Hi ckory, NC 28602

co mplex metamorphosis must take place before an engineering student under stand s what it really mean s to be an engineer. Like most processes, there are many path s to achiev ing the desired final resul t. Th is article co nside rs not only my actual ex perie nces in that respect , but also reflects on my disc ussions with many peers over the years-so it is more than j ust a memoir of my passage along this path to understanding.

having been in a plant , while Type II students can do the math and have intuitive skills, but ca n' t visualize the pro cess . I was definit ely a T ype II stude nt. Coo perative educatio n, summer interns hips, or part-time undergraduate research can eve ntually help Type II studen ts such as myself to co nnect what we study to what it is that real eng ineer s do, e.g., solve prob lem s. Most uni versities have a freshman clas s that conside rs and explains some of the differences between engineering fields. In my case , howeve r, this introductory co urse was ex treme ly vag ue. For such a co urse to be really useful to the stude nt, I feel it should thoroughly defi ne each engi neering disc ipline. For eac h depart ment , there should be spec ific ex amples of the type s of assignm ent s a stude nt might ex pect. Tour s of co mpanies employ ing various types of engineers co uld be included to allow students to see where they might ex pec t to work after
Tanya Bradb urn graduated from North Carolina State University in May of 2000 with a as in Chemical Engineering. She is currently working as an engineer in the Research, Development, and Engineering Division of Corning Cable Systems in Hickory, NC.

In high schoo l, the process toward understanding often begin s upon learnin g that mathem atics and sc ience are too ls of a mysteri ous profession ca lled "e ngi neering ." It is not unu sual to find that when some of the "smart" people in the graduating class ann oun ce their plans to pursue that pro fession, other stude nts will often find them selves pull ed in the same direction . In my case, by the beginning of my senior year in high school I had decid ed that engineering was the path I wanted to follow . Despite this ea rly decision, when I entere d co llege I still had only the slightest idea of what an enginee r's real role in society was or what the typical day- today duti es of an engi neer rea lly were . Th e seco nd stage of metamorph osis occur s in the first engineering cla ss when one is challenged to "think like an engineer." At this j uncture, the class d ivides into two types of stude nts. Type I stude nts are extreme ly intu itive and see m to be able to see processes in their minds withou t ever

Copyright ChE Di vision oj ASEE 2001

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Chemical Engineering Educatio n

graduation, and a chance to hear an engineer from each environment exp lain what he or she does would be extreme ly useful students by helping them make informed decision s ab out the co urse of study to follow . The co-op ex perience naturall y incorporates such opportunities for those students, like myself, who parti cipate. Practically speaking, however, I believe co-op opportunities co me too late to be useful to many of the Type II students who have become disenchanted in the first three semes ters on campus. Stopgap mea sures incorp oratin g some of the most desirable components noted abo ve are needed in ord er to redu ce the loss of students ex perienced as a result of the nonspe cific introductory courses offered at the beginning of their educatio nal experience. A good beginning would be to simply show the stude nts pictures of eq uipme nt that engineers use in eac h of the discip lines. For exa mple, chemical en gine ering stude nts could be show n pictures of separation equipment , co mputer co ntrol eq uipm ent , and microe lectro nic and bio-processing eq uipmen t. This would help provide stude nts with a visua l idea of the huge range of opportunities available in the field. Also. at least one field trip, co mpleme nted by on-ca mpus presentations by articulate practicing engineers, cou ld and should be included in such a co urse.

class sequences needed for your graduation ? Will you be paired with an actual mentor? Are there housing accommodations ? If the company reserves apa rtments for co-ops/interns, are they f urnished ? How will your sa lary typically change as you complete rotations ? Do you get vacation days ?
Som e of the question s may sound inco nsequential, but they aren' t. Shuffling back and forth from ca mpus to plant to ca mpus without breaks gives stude nts very little time to digest their ex periences. Fitting into an existing op timized struc ture designed to acc ommodate students is a huge ad-

Despite this early decision [to g o into engineering], tsrh e n I e n tered colleg e I s till had onl y th e sligh test i dea of w h a t an engineer's real role i n society W'as or w'h at the typical day-to-day duties of an engineer really W'ere.
va ntage in terms of the ultim ate benefits to participants. Maint ain ing such a framewo rk is a significant co ntribution made by co mpanies that are truly co mmitted to co-op program s. Fram ework s for moving and hou sing, as well as for other placem ent issues, is less co mmo n in so-called intern ships. since they are typicall y discontinuous and are cent ered aro und the sum mer month s. Moreover, co mments by intern shi p parti cipants sugges t that such ass ignments often invo lve more ad hoc " mentor" relationships, as co mpared to co-op ass ignme nts. T he third option, und ergraduate resea rch, is another area of opportunity I have had ex perience with, and I will co nside r its benefits after focusing on the off-ca mpus co-op benefits. Wh ile undergradu ate research is highly desirabl e, the time co mmi tme nt involved in trying to acco mmodate all undergradu ates on campus via th is route see ms to be unrea so nable in typical educational institution s. As noted above, co-op assignme nts are qu ite effective because they give students an empowering insight into what can ultimately be don e with their degrees . Such insight can give stude nts the momentum to ove rco me hurdles along the way to acq uiri ng their degree and ca n ultimately increase the
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A key co mmon eleme nt in all these options is the opportunity for a student to see , firs thand, the exc iting impa ct an engi nee r can have in the wo rkplace. Th e co-op option app ear s to be the most practical approac h for most stude nts. Thi s conclusion is based on the realit y of operation in the time-co nstra ined en vironments present in companies and universitie s. Th e companies that have committed to a bona fide co-op program und erstand its value as a screening and recruiting tool and are willin g to inves t in it. Such co mpanies actu all y have a framework in place to support the progr am . For any off-ca mp us oppo rtuni ty, knowing the answers to the followin g questions wil l help stude nts know what to expect and how to prep are for their work ass ignments:

Is the potential assignment part of an on-going established program in the company, or will you be the guinea pig ? Has there ever been a co-op before in the area of the company where you will be working- can you contact prior parti cipants ? Does the company have a year round co-op program , so you aren 't disadvanta ged in access to
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numb er of students who actua lly grad uate. Co-op work ca n also have seco nd-order advantages. In my case, it forced me to leave the safe surroundings of familiar peopl e and places. It put me into a new state, into a new home, and into a completely different environment. With out a doubt , pursuin g a co -op job at Eastman Chemical Compan y in Kingsport, Tennessee, was one of the best decisions I had ever made. I had always lived in the Raleigh-Durham area , and moving to another state to wor k was an unsettlin g decision, to say the least. I was five hours from home when I dro ve by Eastman, or the "Big E," on the way to my first apartment, and my mouth hung ope n the entire tim e as I dro ve past the plant. I had never see n such a plant beforethe Kingsport Division is one of the largest chemical plant s in the US. I remember thinking as I drov e past it, " I have ju st mad e the bigge st mistak e of my life!! !" I simply wasn't prepared for the sme lls of a chemical plant , the sight of the looming distill ation co lumns, the reac tors, and what see med to be smoke (actually steam) swirling in the air. To be honest. at the time I didn 't know what a distill ation column or a reactor looked like. The boxes that I had drawn on engineeri ng paper to represent such equipment in no way approximated the sights. sounds, and smells of an actual plant. I often think of how disconcertin g it would have been if I had never work ed on a co-op job, and if the first time I saw a chemical plant was after graduating as a BS engineer. Eve n if introductory classes had included pictures of a distillation co lumn, I believe a Type II student such as myself would be unprepared for what it is really like to see one in a plant. In any case . however. it would have been more reassuring to at least know what I was looking at. Durin g my first co-o p rotation, I worked with a separations group on a high-pri orit y adso rption project for feed puri fication. Sometim es, I would work from 7 a.m. to II p.m . to meet our proj ect obje ctives, but in spite of the long hour s, it was exciting and challenging to be workin g on a real problem . For my seco nd term , I worked in Cellul ose Esters doin g compress ibility and perce nt solids anal ysis, and for my third rotation. I worked on opt imizi ng the sludge system for the polym er divis ion, working with several crews of opera tors . The reason for describing my co-op ex perience here is to show that no co llege course could possibly simulate what it is like to work with other operators, to actu ally be in a plant , or to work on a trul y stressful project where the result s mattered. It is a far different ex perience from ju st working for a grade! Contact is made with stude nts from many different schools during one 's work cycles . and based on co nvers ations with these pee rs over the years, I have reac hed a numb er of conclusio ns about the strengths and weak nesses of educating chemical engineers. The following paragraphs elucidate a few of my thoughts about steps that could be taken that would greatly enhance the educational experience of students.
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Af ter students select an enginee ring specia lty, regardless of whe ther or not they know what they are getting into, more practical applications should be includ ed to complement the theoretical background s they receive in the classroom . Whil e in so me cases, such pra ct ical teaching may not be eco nomi call y possibl e, more can usuall y be don e and it ca n be don e mu ch earlie r. Specificall y, simple qualitati ve experimental illustrations would be useful, eve n when the students don 't co mpletely understand every detail and equation needed to desc ribe the situation. For instance, seei ng a distillation column conce ntrate a dye from a feed stream is impressive and offers moti vation to learn why it work s; seeing a micro electronic part made or a bio reactor work ca n inspir e the student to learn more about complex reactions and mass tran sfer phenom ena . Connecting these exciting processes to the need to learn about chemical engineering fundamentals ca n make the student want to learn abo ut these subj ects. It see ms to me that there is no real reason why some of these practical moti vational aspec ts cannot be integrated more effec tive ly into our formal educa tion. [ know that senior-leve l enginee ring course s demonstrate so me of these practical applications. In my se nior design class, we were assigned to work in groups of 3-4 and were give n a chemi cal to produce. Our assignment was to research the che mical in patents and textbooks and even to contact companies to develop a process for making the chemical. Whil e designin g the process, we had to perform energy and mass balances to track our co mponents in producing the desired product at the necessary rate . We also had labs where we had hand s-on expe rience with reactors, dis tillatio n columns, heat exc hangers. etc. Th e point is that students would benefit more from some type of practical-application expos ure throu ghout their education, rather than packin g it all in at the end of their schooling. Even short demon stration s and gro up projects, when done earlier in the curriculum. would be more satisfyi ng and valuable. Ca n something be learned and transported back to ca mpus from indu strial, co-o p. and intern experiences to enrich the learning ex perie nce of all students-even those who never leave campus? I believe so-especially in the area of co mputer skills and the need to better integrate their develop ment throu ghout the curric ulum, princip ally throu gh the use of homework assignm ent s. There are at least four computer program s that are esse ntial for a practicing chemical enginee r to be familiar with: Excel, Aspen, Powerl'oint , and Word. Most employers, eve n those found in co-o p jo bs. ex pec t an employee to be co mpetent with Excel. It see ms to me that skills taught on ca mpus in the use of these softwa re program s should lead. rather than lag behind, those that are demanded in an indu strial setting. Thi s is often not the case, however.
Chemical Enginee ring Education

Throughout their ca mpus car eers. stude nts should build steadily on the sophisticated appli cation of tools such as Excel. A good practice to follow is to teach the use of Visual Basic program ming-that skill can then be used with Excel in later co urses after students master the sim ple eleme nts of Exc el in their freshman co urse . Whil e co-oping, I ofte n needed to add da ta to a spread sheet with over 700 rows, and it goes without say ing that ed iting a sprea ds heet that long can be very tim e-consuming. But (fo rtunately) an engi neer in my group showed me some simple programming in Visual Basic that showed that deleting spaces between da ta on such a huge spreads heet need not be done by hand at the expense of hour s. From my co-op ex periences, I learn ed th at being a good e ng inee r requires bein g able to o ptimize tim e exp enditures. Sp ending hours ed iting sprea dshee ts that can otherwise be don e mor e effic ie ntly is not good tim e man agem ent. Beside s learning basic sprea dshee t skills. students should learn how to analyze large da ta sets. During two of my co- op term s. I had to anal yze someo ne else's data. eve n though I didn 't know all the details about the process related to the data . I now understand that one doesn' t need to be an ex pert in all of the pro cess detail s to ga in insigh t about why so mething is not going well with the process. A sys tems engi neering perspect ive should be introdu ced and emphasized early in the curriculum in my opinion. Assignme nts should be giv en where only a brief description of the proc ess is pro vided with a spreadshee t co ntaining a large amo unt of data. The assignm ent sho uld be to ana lyze the data and the n decide which data should be co ns ide red . I beli e ve that most prac ticin g en gineer s wo uld agr ee th at sta tis tics (whic h is nece ssary in dat a ana lys is) sho uld be requ ired for all eng inee ring stude nts . In addition to Exce l. Aspen (the unit operations simulato r) is a key program and should be integrat ed into more of the chemi cal enginee ring curriculum. I had two wee ks of Aspen during my seco nd engineering class, and after that class, I never used it again in schoo l. Perhaps it will surfa ce agai n in the final design co urse, but Aspen would have fit we ll in seve ral cou rses prior to that. Ideally, assig nme nts co uld be give n requ iring integration of Aspen and Exce l-this does happ en in the real wo rld of co-ops. Two addi tional easy-to-use tools. Pow erPoi nt and Word , also deser ve some co nside ration. Both of these progr am s can be used by anyone who ca n turn on a co mputer. but to use them effec tive ly take s practi ce. Gi ven the inten se pace in indu stry, imprecise co mm unication guarantees that prob lem s will occur. At the end of each of my rotations. I had to give a forma l present ation in fro nt of my peers. hiring man age rs, and whoever else wa nted to atte nd. It takes experience to organize and present info rmat ion in front of a large audien ce when you are under a spotlight and have to use a microph one , but the thou ght that a goo d idea that ca n' t be
WillieI' 2001

co mmunicated is was ted must always be at the forefront when planning one of these prese ntations. I must also add that hearin g yo ur ow n vo ice echo wit hout q uivering in suc h a situa tio n gives yo u co nfide nce in yo ur ability to give a pre sentation anywhere and to anyo ne afte r th at , so the effort is wo rthw hi le. Before closing, I would like to mention an addi tional ex perie nce vehicle that already ex ists on campuses that co uld be inva luable in assis ting the student's metamorphosis to engi neer. Incre asing stude nt-fac ulty interacti ons may sound like a simple idea, but whi le it may be obvious, it is not simple to do we ll. Our stude nt chapter of the AIChE had a program in whic h juniors were pai red with seniors in their maj or , and senio rs were paired with a professor to create a ment or-ment ee relation ship . T he probl em with this simple but exce llent idea is that ofte n nothin g happen ed . For ins ta nce . when I pa rt ic ipa ted in it, a meeting wa s se t up fo r stude nts to meet th e pro fe ssor s who had be en assig ned to them as their ment or-but none o f the professors showed up ! We all acce pt that there are many de ma nds on a professor ' s time, and such a ment orshi p program is simply one more dem and that the professor didn 't voluntee r for, which pro bably place s it low on the priority list. eve rtheless . if professors mo re actively part icipated and actua lly showe d interest in programs such as this, stude nts wo uld benefi t enormo usly. Ideally, the co ntact wo uld provide exposure to the profe ssor' s rese arch program. and co uld possibl y include some actual research experience for the student. Th is ex perience co uld give the stude nt a more balanced perspective, enhancing the industrial co-op and internship ex periences, to draw upo n when co nside ring the optio ns avai lable after gra duation. It took a bit of determ ination on my part to find tha t such an "o n-ca mpus co -op" ex perience was ava ilable. Afte r my indu strial co-op. I eve ntually work ed for one of my engineerin g professors over the summer. Th e project invol ved growi ng bacteria that harbor a specific esterase that we wanted to recover. Th e pro fessor took an active interest in my caree r and educational goa ls. whi ch was an attitude that I had not seen in a teacher since high schoo l. Such a personal relationship goes a long way toward allowi ng stude nts to discover what they really want to do in life and what they need to do in ord er to develop the skills for pursuing their go al. I found that si mply having an intell igent , exper ienced, and patie nt individu al to boun ce questions off of was enormously helpful in allow ing me to fra me my long-term plan s. In fact, thi s ro le is th e co mmo n e le me nt pres e nt in bot h successful indus tria l or successful ca mpus co -o p mentori ng . Thi s component cata lyze s the organization of all the fac ts and experiences that are jumb led toget her in a typi cal "standard" und er gr aduate ex pe rience . It is o ne tru ly esse ntial e le me nt that tu rn s a be wilde red stude nt int o a se lf-assure d g ra dua te e ngi neer. 0
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