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Session 3213

Chemical Engineering: Professionally Ignored?

Farhad Sharifi

Department of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary AB T2N 1N4, Canada

Abstract

Chemical engineering was founded about a century ago, when the demands of the society for chemical products together with the modern life style enforced major evolutions in chemical industry. Educational programs at the universities had to change accordingly. Furthermore, the broad application and importance of chemical engineering field has resulted in its division into many new subdisciplinaries such as polymer, dyes, textile industry, etc. In recent years, job market for chemical engineers has become very volatile. As a consequence, chemical engineers have become desperate, and are often absorbed by other fields based on job availability and their general skills. These fields are sometimes not even engineering. Chemical engineers sacrifice their long-term professional career to earn quicker money. The evolution of the modern industry from a conventional hierarchical (top-down) into a skill-oriented (cross linked) design has become evident. Personal skills like being a team worker, communicative, collaborative, initiative for quality, design and efficiency are becoming more attractive to companies over specialized skills in certain fields. Many companies prefer to hire engineers based on general skills, and then train them through a post-employment program according to their own standards. There are also programs to send the chemical engineers back to the university to take various courses required based on their new responsibilities at work. These companies have shown to be more productive and successful in most cases. In the current professional working environment of engineering, a more specific definition for a professional chemical engineer is required. Universities should implement modern equipment and update the applied courses according to the modern industrial technology and requirements. However, students will require a standard basic knowledge of chemical engineering fundamentals. Industrial experiences of an engineer in addition to his educational career have enabled him to grasp a brighter image of the realities in this field of engineering worldwide.

1 Introduction

It is required to know about the history of the chemical engineering profession in order to understand its concept and purpose. Although chemical engineering came to era over a century ago, but many people still don’t know what chemical engineering is. Old stories about the Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright Ó 2002, American Society for Engineering Education

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Sharifi, F. (2002, June), Chemical Engineering: Professionally Ignored? Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--11057