New Mexico Tech Department of Chemical Engineering Industrial Advisory Board
February 1, 2008
Board Roll Call:
Dick Traeger
Dave Boneau
Jim
Don Hooper
Michaelann Tartis
Justine Johannes
Lincoln Busselle
Glen Kuswa
Don Weinkauf
Corey Leclerc
Agenda:
Introductions
State of Chemical Engineering:

Ongoing conversation regarding exposing the students to chemical engineering
sooner in their academic career through a specialized Intro to Chemical
Engineering class for freshmen.

Provide a sense of community to the students in the department
o Mentoring program to tie under to upper classmen
o AIChE or ChemEng department social events

Classes with team rotations
o Varied teams with individual and paired activities
o Engaged the shy students
o Homework teams assessed themselves and team members when the teams
rotated
Undergraduate engagement in research is a significant strength in the program
Lots of attraction and advantage tied to the small university environment relative
to the large universities
Space allocation still an issue
o Lab space at a premium
 Safety concerns
o Fair allocation of space
 Lease or Charge cost centers for space
IT ( software / hardware support)
o Matlab and Labview are the most common software tools used
o Stats packages that may be of value to pursue
 JMP, Statistica and Aspen
Curricula – strengths and gaps
o Strength
 Rotating team classes
 Self-directed classes
 Junior design class
 Honors process control class
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o Gap
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TRIZ class – tought by Doug Dunston, good invention
methodology class
Statistics, data analysis, and DOE
 good start but needs additional focus
 Engineering ethics
 Math 103 – summertime jump start ?
 Intro to Chemical Engineering
Erosion of “Core Engineering”
o Core engineering concept is getting peeled away on a department-bydepartment basis
o Chemical Engineering is the last one to set up a major specific Intro to
Engineering class
Engineering Exam analysis
o NM Tech students perform well on the morning session of the FE exam,
consisting of core engineering classes. Afternoon session focusing on
chemical engineering challenges the students.
o Strong correlation of Math 103 (algebra/trig) students to performance and
graduation; M103 students tend to trend ~1 yr behind the M104 (calculus)
students.
 Slower trending of M103 students may be tied to M103/104
required elective nature preceding chemistry
 A Tech Academy focusing upon math up-skilling was proposed as
an avenue to advance M103/104 capability
Student Interview Session
 The board met with students over lunch and polled them for their
views on the program, the university and their post-graduation
plans
Input:
o Feel that there should be an actual chemical engineering class freshman
year : “This is chemical engineering in-a-box”
o 326 is a great class for strategies and application
o Education 101 – study skills, tactics, strategies, etc. as a replacement for
ES110 course
 Ideally ES110 could help make a case for pursuit of all disciplines,
and given the direction of the other engineering departments to
craft major-specific intro courses it was felt that chemical
engineering should follow suit.
 It would be good to have early classes differentiating biomedical,
gas/petroleum, synthesis, grad school…
o Career Direction ? Is there enough guidance from the faculty advisory/
 Dr. Weinkauf is a great coach/ advisor, but stretched
 Students feel the addition of 2 new rofessors will facilitate the
advisory process.

It was suggested that the faculty advisors poll the students several
times over the course of their junior/senior years to challenge, and
refine their career direction goals.
o Tech : How did you find out about it? What attracted you to it?
 History channel program blowing things up…
 Web page for chemical engineering; pre-enrollment
exposure easier/more accessible than printed catalog
 Princeton Review - cited tech as the 2nd best value in
engineering
 Transfer scholarship was a plus
 Location (Socorro) was “a bit scarey”
 What would you change?
 “Move the school to Albuquerque” (laughter)
 Humanity/social science class requirements and timing are
questionable from a relevance perspective
o Humanities at Tech is atrocious, not diverse in
faculty opinion centering on technical
communication or technical writing
 Space is excessively compressed, numerous lab safety
concerns were expressed due to crowding
 What do you like about Chem Eng at Tech?
 The professors inter-leave their courses with prior courses
by consulting the students to gauge prior exposure
 Students go through the program together due to the timing
of the classes
 ~1/2 of the students get internship opportunities
 Nationally ranked program, in top 50
 Would send their kids to Tech in 20 years
 Students were polled on curricula enhancements that would enrich
the program, but likely increase the course load
 Students felt that adding 4+ hours over the 4 year program
in order to add statistics and Design of Experiments would
involve more incremental work for them, but that it would
certainly pay off in the long run
 Program is perceived as intensive, so not a lot of room to
take additional courses, may push curricula to ~ 20 credits /
semester
o The sense is that they are always behind the current
schedule as it is
 Adding a 6 week summer session junior/senior year?
o 100% application / 10 unit ops labs over the
summer would give pause, but not be a showstopper.
o “Lame” if the summer session was just a class


[Don Hooper]
o Would impact the last summer internship
opportunity
Pushing the program to 4+ years would be hard on those
who had merit based or lottery scholarships that ran for 4
years only. Would need to work the logistics of funding for
the summer session.
Software, computers, automation / modeling tools
o Students felt that they had adequate access to
computers on campus ( department and computer
lab)
o Software was tossed at them with minimal support,
and a figure it out yourself plan, superficial training
at best
o Could be frustrating
o CadKey – most useful command was ‘reboot’
o P&ID training would be good at a senior level so
that they could read drawings

Board Discussion/Conclusions
 Curricula is rich but could be tweaked to improve relevance
and efficiency
 Highlight the student awards on the Chem Eng website to
communicate the value of the department
 Space shortfall received considerable attention:
o ABET commitment to resolve by summer ’07 still
open
o Safety issues cited by faculty and students over
crowded labs
o Lab crowding may have been a factor in the loss of
a faculty member
o Lack of space underpins the department

Plans/Actions Required:
 Develop a 4/5 year plan [Tardis, Leclerc,Busselle ]
 Expand Webpage with links to catalog, math requirements,
and potential major options ( biomed, petroleum,
synthesis…) [ AIChE ]
 Develop / include transport class, physics revision into the
curriculum, try to make the classes connect better
[Weinkauf ]
 Space concern letter to Dr. Lopez [ board ]
 Explore adding Professional Ethics (PHIL321) to the
curricula to address the FE exam shortfall [ faculty ]