Thoughts On Unit Ops Lab: What Was, Is, and Ought

The responsibilities of engineering educators continually evolve with, adapt to, and even influence industrial and societal conditions.  Faculties continuously struggle over what, and how, to best prepare students.   Prof. Ogden at Bucknell asserted in 1934 that “…a certain minimum amount of semi-plant equipment must be used in order to present more effectively the applications of the theory of chemical engineering as actually practiced in industrial operations.”   The Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, now the American Society for Engineering Education, studied chemical engineering laboratory instruction and equipment for the next year.  The nature of that study (and of subsequent studies), along with the attendant findings and recommendations, illustrate the status quo to a large extent.  The historical development of chemical engineering laboratories, in particular the teaching of methods for developing and scaling industrial production processes, will be traced.  Juxtaposed with the underlying motivations for more recent calls for change, one will see why undergraduate chemical engineering laboratory equipment and teaching practices continue to shift focus away from pilot-plant scale operation and process design.   The ongoing changes to the Unit Operations lab at Carnegie Mellon University demonstrate increased focus, in particular, to engineering practice skill development and to student-led, research or development projects of a wide variety of topics.  Furthermore, each project may have different desired educational outcomes.  This is and, we assert, ought to be.  The likely consequences designers of chemical processes and producers of chemical products may see will be discussed.