Introduction: Teaching students in the classroom on a regular basis quickly reveals the importance of activity breaks. Active learning is an effective use of activity breaks where, for example, a small group of students work together on a problem with each individual group then discussing their answer with the entire class. An alternative active learning technique is to educate students about the history and personalities of Chemical Engineering. Almost every lecture in an engineering class contains references to the people and their accomplishments that form the foundation for today's students: Gibbs free energy, Arrhenius equation, Reynolds number, McCabe-Thiele plot. While many of these people are at least vaguely familiar to us as instructors, the students are usually completely unfamiliar with them. Since there is usually at least one of these “Old Dead Guys” in every lecture, they provide an opportunity to re-engage the students through an active learning exercise.

Methods: When an “Old Dead Guy” is encountered during a class period, it is usually towards the end of a derivation. This provides an ideal opportunity for an active learning break. The students are first asked to guess when the “Old Dead Guy” lived and did the work that bears their name. After a few inaccurate guesses, a picture of the person is shown to the students. This usually allows a slightly more accurate guess. This is followed by listing birth date, degrees earned, and institutional affiliations. Then the persons major accomplishments are listed (e.g., Nobel Prize), including the accomplishment that is the focus of the ongoing lecture. Finally a short discussion of why the accomplishment occurred at that time, the historical context in which it occurred, what other historical events influenced it, and other related broad societal influences are discussed. The pictures and biographical information are usually obtained from internet or other reference sources.

Results: The historically focused active learning breaks have been used over the last five years in a required kinetics and reaction engineering class and an elective industrial chemical production class. The students respond well to them, especially if the historical context and societal influences create a bit of controversy (e.g., Haber and Bosch developed catalysts to synthesize ammonia so that it could be turned into explosives to support Germany in World War I, and Thomas Midgely who invented chlorofluorocarbons and tetraethyl lead ). This also allows the students to gain perspective on the industry they will soon be a part of. The “Old Dead Guys” can and should also contain women and other minorities (e.g., Maud Menten). After awhile, the students come to expect the breaks. Several students have gone out and found pictures and biographical info on their own. In addition the students actively participate by deciding who in the department the Old Dead Guy most closely resembles. Finally, the students have adopted the idea for their own use. When they do classroom presentations, the almost universally incorporate their own “Old Dead Guy” and one class got into a competition to see who could get the oldest “Old Dead Guy”. Therefore, a historical active learning break provides a positive way to introduce history into the curriculum.