Curriculum challenges

The current undergraduate curriculum in chemical engineering, although it provides an excellent conceptual base for graduates who move into the electronics industries, could be improved by the introduction of instractional material and example problems relevant to the challenges outlined in this chapter. This would not require the creation of new courses, but rather the provision of material to emich existing ones. This theme is echoed, more broadly, in Chapter 10. 

Chemical engineering faculty need to consider these challenges in planning for tomorrow s more broadly based curriculum. 

How can chemical engineering departments implement this broader curriculum as well as aggressively respond to new research challenges and opportunities A bold step is needed. The committee recommends that universities conduct a one-time expansion of chemical engineering departments over the next 5 years, exercising a preference for new faculty capable of research at interdisciplinaiy frontiers. 

Pilot, A., Bulte, A. M. W. (2006). The use of contexts as a challenge for the chemistry curriculum Its successes the need for further development and understanding. International Journal of Science Education, 28(9), 1087-1112. 

Proof that the new approaches work under normal classroom conditions gives moral support to teachers and challenges them to change their own perceptions of teaching, learning and the curriculum. The results of the evaluation of formal trials of new materials and approaches about the triplet relationship should be made available to the teachers. One effective way to do so is to organise matters such that teachers who made trial use of the materials share their experiences with others (Ferk Savec et al., 2008). 

Adamson PB, Abraham WT, Love C, et al. The evolving challenge of chronic heart failure management a call for a new curriculum for training heart failure specialists. J Am Coll Cardiol. Oct 6 2004 44(7) 1354-1357. 

We are taught in business school (I am told) that every challenge is an opportunity. That is probably untrue in physical chemistry (and perhaps in commerce too), but there are certainly opportunities for us to enhance our teaching. I have identified three principal ones in Fig.lb, namely graphics, curriculum reform, and the conceptual basis of our subject. As for challenges, no opportunity is an island, and I like to think that the triangle summarizes the interplay between them and the strength that they acquire in combination. 

The problems are the ultimate deliverable in a physical chemistry course. If you can t do the problems, you can t do physical chemistry. Students know this, and focus on the problems, sometimes to the exclusion of reading the text. As a result, I suspect students primary sense of what the field of physical chemistry comprises, and what it might be useful for, arises directly from the problems assigned. What message do students take home from the problems While a thorough inventory of the problems available to physical chemistry instructors would be most instructive, the problems collected in Table I, culled from the chapters on chemical kinetics in a number of physical chemistry texts, illustrate the challenges facing the curriculum. 

The challenge to chemical education is to make it clear that safety and loss prevention are integral considerations in every part of the curriculum. 

The complexity of integrating research elements into the laboratory environment is counterbalanced by the impact that early research experiences can have on students. Integrating research into the undergraduate curriculum is complicated and difficult at times however, the positive impacts on students are immense. The retention of students in the sciences because of their increased research self-efficacy is reason enough to face the challenge. 

In this paper, we attempt a narrow survey of some important problems in environmental chemical engineering to convey their flavor and challenges. The open-ended character of environmental chemical engineering problems makes them ripe for innovation. We hope to stimulate interest in attacking these problems, in terms of both research and inclusion in the basic chemical engineering curriculum. 

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