DISCUSSION
Contributions from the chemical engineering community

2003 September 19
Cesimiro Fabian
It appears to me that many chemical engineering schools in the United States focus on developing a mathematical model before the mechanism of a reaction is attempted to determined. Therefore, the applicability of the model in real plant practice does not work. These comments are brought from papers mainly read in the Electrochemical Society's journal.
I may say in Australia, we attempt to learn the mechanism of the reaction first then it can be more accurately modelled.

2003 September 17
v.d.maheshwari
as a undergraduate chemical engineer i suggest that new courses ,technology shouid be adopted in a way such that a gradute chemical engineer can face oppurtinites easily given to him.there would be regular link between industry requirement and courses offered to engineers.

2003 September 8
Prof.Tarakad.Viswanathan.SUBRAMANIAN
The Chemical Engg taught in early 2010s must be WHOLISTIC CHEMICAL ENGG which gives Maestros of Chemical Engg Research and development with innovative skills.

2003 September 7
Manuel Garcia-Perez
In my opinion the major problem of present chemical engineering curriculum is the lack of an integrative discipline. We have been very fast to introduce the advances in biology, physics and mathematic in our chemical engineering curriculum. However I do not see the same degree of effort to introduce the advances in the social sciences. We are only thinking in the 10 percent of our students that are going to do reseach. Where are the skills that are needed to solve operational (dealing with humans)and mantenance problems? I believe that the curriculum is not balanced, we are teaching only product development (in which the chemists are better than us) and process design (but the number is new units is very small). However, we do not teach how to integrate these aspects in the industrial reality where 80 % of the problems are relating with human behaviour (operation and mantenance). The chemical engineers need to look more to the social sciences. The chemical engineering is certainly an integrative carrier however, we do not have any discipline that provide this kind of knowledge. The new Cuban Chemical engineering curriculum (started in 1990) introduced an integrative course called Process Engineering, with a pure integrative purpose. The results were very good. The MIT is also offerting a Ph.D degree in which are integrated management skills with a scientific formation.

2003 August 19
Asad Hasan Sahir
Your concerted efforts definitely has a widescale impact on how the Chemical Engineering Curriculum is percieved all around the world. As an graduate student in a developing country(India),I sincerely believe the Chemical Engineering fraternity all around the world would greatly benefit if a program informing educators the need of such a change and the accomodations they should be prepared to make(the differences between the present and the future) is evolved.

2003 July 21
Theodoros Kritikos
In developing the new curriculum one has to retain some of the insurpassable principles of the old curriculum development of a general, abstract but powerful way of thinking, regardless of the details (e.g. Modell and Reid 's first four-six chapters of Advanced Chemical Thermodynamics, O. Levenspiel's Reaction Engineering, etc). In this regard not only fundamental sciences but also derivatives (especially computer science, systems theory and economics- macro and micro) should be part, along with fundamental sciences, of the base on which future chemical engineering curriculum should evolve.

this is filler text to keep the page full-width. it is long enough to wrap the line. it is also the same color as the table background color.