Board 27: Work in Progress: Where We Live: The Process of Building an Experiential-Energy Design Course for Undergraduate Chemical Engineering
- Conference
- Location
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Portland, Oregon
- Publication Date
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June 23, 2024
- Start Date
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June 23, 2024
- End Date
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July 12, 2024
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
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Chemical Engineering Division (ChED)
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/46843
Paper Authors
Desen Sevi Özkan
University of Connecticut
orcid.org/0000-0002-1996-7719
Desen is an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department. Her research interests are in sociotechnical engineering education and contextual energy education. She holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Virginia Tech and has a background in chemical engineering.
Monika Crowl University of Connecticut
Abstract
In the engineering curriculum, energy remains a largely abstract concept taught piecemeal throughout various engineering disciplines. Chemical engineering concepts in heat transfer, thermodynamics, and fluid flow can be difficult for students to connect to their everyday experiences of turning the heat on, driving, or using a computer [1]. In a time of an energy transition (Shields & Stefek, 2023) and promises of achieving net-zero goals, there is a need for students (and faculty) to cultivate an understanding of energy that integrates concepts from fundamental courses with local energy infrastructure. Through local and conceptual understandings of energy, we seek to design a junior-level chemical engineering process safety and design course that helps students develop integrated understandings of heat transfer, thermodynamics, unit operations, electricity generation, and transmission.
In this paper, we, two faculty members in a chemical engineering department, detail our process of designing a new junior-level chemical engineering design course focused on sustainability and inquiry-based learning. We shed light on our own research into local energy infrastructure and provide context-rich instructional decisions for the course design. Building new context-rich courses can be a challenge that is often underestimated and undervalued [3-5]. Ultimately, we designed the course to prepare students for their senior engineering design experience through a locally informed engineering design project based on interviews with sustainability and education stakeholders. Through this work, we developed three objectives of the course: (1) help students bridge their theoretical knowledge of energy with their understanding of the local energy infrastructure, (2) give students the opportunity to apply sustainability concepts within the chemical engineering framework, and (3) analyze the economic, social, and technical impacts of engineering decision-making.
Özkan, D. S., & Crowl, M. (2024, June), Board 27: Work in Progress: Where We Live: The Process of Building an Experiential-Energy Design Course for Undergraduate Chemical Engineering Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/46843
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