Changes in the ChemE Curriculum

Bet you never thought you knew some ChemE!

No Gravatar

Most of you know that I am a ChemE. (I am lots of other things, but I have wanted to be a ChemE since I’ve been a tyke and I approach almost everything I do using the mindset of this discipline.)

I’ve also complained that they’ve dumbed down the curriculum. OK. They’ve dumbed down almost every single curriculum at our colleges. But when I matriculated, we needed 144 credits to earn our ChemE degree. And, given the fact that a full 1/4 of our courses involved labs (which meant 3 or 4 hours of class time for 1 credit, versus 1 hour of lecture for 1 credit), an 18 credit-hour semester load meant at least 26 hours of class time weekly. Now, only 120 credits are needed to graduate and 1/5 are lab related. Oh- and the entire financial management/ business training portion of the program has evanesced.

Changes in the ChemE Curriculum
And, then, today (ok, that probably means about a month ago, but the time this post sees the light of day), I read how UCDavis is trying something new to keep ChemE’s in the program. (This discipline is still among the most demanding of the undergraduate curricula. And, less than 40% of those who start in the program actually attain that BSChE degree.) How is UCDavis doing this? By using coffee (thankfully, NOT Starbucks) as part of the curriculum.

It turns out that coffee production is an easy way to introduce students to chemical engineering principles. For example, we all think brewing coffee is a snap- but there are chemical reactions that are occurring, transport phenomena (hot water extracts the oils and flavors from coffee grounds, fluid dynamics that describes the hot water and steam flows, and mass transfer [getting chemicals from one place to another]), plus colloidal science considerations.

Then, there’s also the concept of taking apart a Mr. Coffee coffeemaker. To discern how small-scale engineering works. And, then discussing the art and science of coffee roasting. (Just so you know, coffee roasting is typically effected  in a Fluidized Bed Reactor!)

It turns out Design of Coffee (ECM1, taught by Drs. William Ristenpart and Tonya Kuhl) is now among the most popular electives at UCDavis. And, most of the 1500 or so signed up aren’t even engineering students. The program also requires teams of students to work with unroasted coffee beans; they compete to produce the best tasting beverage.

And, the Specialty Coffee Association of America has joined in the fray. By sponsoring the UCDavis Coffee Center, a 6000 square foot center. (Peet’s Coffee, by itself, also threw in a quarter of a million bucks to improve the new building.)

But, don’t forget that ChemE’s also are critical technologists when it comes to wine production.   (Fermentation, fluid mechanics, filtration, extraction, etc. are the unit operations necessary for this art/science.) So, you shouldn’t be surprised to know that the new coffee center is contiguous to the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science on campus!

Share this:
Share this page via Email Share this page via Stumble Upon Share this page via Digg this Share this page via Facebook Share this page via Twitter
Share

4 thoughts on “Bet you never thought you knew some ChemE!”

  1. When I went to Bronx Science back in the late 60’s, we had a course on food chemistry. Some of it was pretty hard, but it was also fascinating. We taught our son some of the chemistry of cooking by making different types of chocolate chip cookies (soft, hard, chewy) by adjusting ingredients and cooking temps/times. No chemical engineering, though.

Comments are closed.