Getting a minor in an academic subject is very common at universities and at Tech, but up until recently, there were no minors associated with MTU’s Department of Chemical Engineering. This is no longer the case since Tech ChemE inaugurated three minors in Fall 2004 in Polymer Science and Engineering, Minerals Processing, and Bioprocess Engineering. There are currently 17 stu-dents registered for the PSE minor, 25 for the Minerals minor, and 10 are signed up for the Bioprocess minor.
The Minerals Processing minor, technically speaking, is not new to Tech. When the minerals processing program was housed in the Metallurgical Engineering Department (now Materials Science and Engineering), there was a minor in minerals processing.
This minor went dormant as the minerals processing faculty were moved first to their own department and then to the department of Geological Engineering and Sciences, but once the faculty found a home in Chemical Engineering, we re-vamped and reinvigorated the minor; this 16-19 credit minor is now the most popular of the three chemical-engineering minors, drawing students from many departments. There is even a scholarship program that directly targets students in the Minerals Processing minor –an excellent way to encourage participation.
The ChemE program has long had a focus in polymers and polymer engineering, and many discussions have taken place over the years of how to allow students to focus in this area. The minor in Polymer Science and Engineering is the outgrowth of this pro-gram. The PSE minor has two tracks: a 16-17 credit polymer-science track that is optimized for chemical engineers and chemists, and a 16 credit polymer-engineering track that is aimed at mechanical and materials engineers. The students signed up for the PSE minor often participate in independent research with one of the three CM faculty doing research in polymers.
The Bioprocess Engineering minor is Tech’s answer to the problem of how to bring Tech students into this fast growing field while allowing them to remain chemical engineers, biologists, or materials engineers. Most degree programs do not have much space for all the biological and engineering courses one needs to understand bioprocess engineering; our solution to this is a 16-credit interdisciplinary minor which requires most majors to take extra credits, but which rewards students with the added credential of the minor. There are 10 students currently signed up for this minor, and there would be more if it were not so challenging to schedule all the classes that are required in this course of study.
The CM Department is aware of the problem and is working on solutions to it so that more students can take advantage of this minor. Other minors that are popular among CM majors are the Math minor (requires only two classes above the CM minimum), the Econom-ics minor (many General Education classes can double count for this), and foreign language minors.
The Chemistry minor would seem to be a natural for ChemE’s, but again a schedul-ing difficulty has stymied interested students. With encouragement from the ChemE de-partment, the Chemistry Department recently made a change to their minor that should make the minor in chemistry easier for a CM major to schedule. Another new minor that should appear soon is the minor in Pharmaceutical Chemistry. The Pharm Chem major went on the books at MTU in 2006, and the courses for this subject are now well established. The Chemistry Department is actively developing the minor in Pharm Chem, and we anticipate that CM majors will be drawn to this minor. The opportunities in pharmaceuticals are quite apparent to anyone reading the many national news stories about the pharmaceuticals industry in the US. Thus, although CM majors are quite busy with the required 131 semester credits needed to graduate from Tech, the high quality students we attract to Chemical Engineering are not satisfied with the mini-mum and often seek greater challenges such as co-ops and study abroad. Now the opportunity to minor is a popular choice, and with the establishment of three minors in our Department, we are able to give CM majors a chance to broaden their preparation in several im-portant technical fields.
Written by: Dr. Faith Morrison, Associate Professor Chemical Engineering |
