Students as partners (SaP) is becoming an increasingly common notion in higher education , but we continue to grapple with questions around how to best involve our students with the work we do as educators. Queries around responsibility, accountability and trust are raised when considering SaP. Participatory action research is presented from an…

A chemical engineering student's knowledge of theory, experimental design, and real-world processes is tested and enforced in the Unit Operations laboratory courses. However, instructors are facing challenges of delivering high-quality, hands-on laboratory content with limited resources and increasingly large class sizes. Limited in-lab time is…

In our chemical engineering curricula, students may enroll in introductory thermodynamics as a prerequisite to or as a corequisite with material and energy balances (MEB). We sought to determine why students enrolled in these courses in a given sequence whether it impacts performance. Students' enrollment decisions were mostly based on logistics…

The authors develop an educational simulation game for basic vapour-liquid equilibrium (VLE) to use in chemical engineering education, basing the design on educational guidelines from the active learning literature. The game is tested in three cohorts totalling 84 students, showing significant increase in a knowledge test of VLE, and positive…

A chemical engineering analysis course was modified to include analytics with advanced numerical methods. The course uses the MATLAB computational environment to develop student programming, modeling, analytics, and optimization skills. Case studies reinforce MATLAB, numerical methods, and advanced optimization skills. Students reported confidence…

The outcomes of students who completed a ChE graduate bridging course sequence were compared against a group of students with ad hoc preparation. Bridging course students were found to have a modestly higher rate of graduate degree conferral and slightly lower graduate GPAs (though the GPA effect size was found to be small to medium) compared to…

This paper seeks to deepen our understanding of how the emergence of industrial engineering degrees in a Colombian region related with industrial, economic and societal dynamics in the first decades of the twentieth century. To this end, it explores the insertion of the graduates of the first cohorts of the Chemical Engineering programme of the…

A laboratory experiment was performed using tetra-n-butylammonium bromide (TBAB) ionic semiclathrate hydrate, a crystalline compound. Ionic semiclathrate hydrates have unique properties, and hence, novel technologies utilizing the ionic semiclathrate hydrates have been proposed to date. Thus, students could learn fundamentals of functional…

We have developed an assessment of authentic problem-solving in chemical engineering, which we used to measure students' problem-solving at the beginning and end of a cornerstone design course. We measured how much problem-solving students learned, and how these students compared with data collected from seniors at the beginning of the capstone…

This paper introduces a novel virtual method to conduct continuous distillation experiment in an undergraduate unit operation laboratory with the help of SPM 700 Distillation Column, one of the modules available in Simtronics, a commercial process operation simulator. Simtronics simulator is a powerful tool to teach process industry skills and it…

Development of team skills is vital to becoming a successful and productive engineer. To prepare students for successful team-based work, they need a basic understanding of the organizational psychology underpinning teamwork and an introduction to tools and techniques to develop and sustain team effectiveness. The goal of this paper is to…

Undergraduate research is widely recognized as a high-impact practice in higher education, but pressures on new faculty may make them hesitant to engage in the potentially time-consuming mentorship of undergraduate researchers. The objective of our workshop was to inspire and equip faculty to engage undergraduates in their laboratories and…

Project-based learning (PBL) empowers students to become active learners. In this work computational reverse osmosis (RO) projects developed from industrial case studies and research were implemented in several chemical engineering courses to enhance student learning experience. Students not only gained knowledge in water treatment, but also…

Engineering is fundamentally about design, yet many undergraduate programs offer limited opportunities for students to learn to design. This design case reports on a grant-funded effort to revolutionize how chemical engineering is taught. Prior to this effort, our chemical engineering program was like many, offering core courses primarily taught…

Organizing undergraduates in chemistry, energy engineering, and chemical engineering specialties to participate in an energy transformation experiment can encourage them to think about the impact of human activities on nature and stimulate them to learn more about the topic. This laboratory experiment demonstrates a general approach to the…