A major goal was an enhanced orientation toward business and entrepreneurship. In chemical engineering, students see these ideas personified in their faculty. One faculty member has joined with a colleague in biomedical engineering and another in medicine to create a technique called electrostatic spinning for producing micron-sized fibers which can be laid into any desired shape to provide a scaffold for the in-growth of tissue. The fibers can be collagen or any other desired biodegradable material. Patents are pending, and the investigators have created a start-up firm to commercialize the technology. A financial “angel” has joined the team.

Another faculty member has a small company that has received a Phase II Award from the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. Such Phase II awards are for $1.0 million.

Another faculty member has a company devoted to the development of more effective proton transport membranes that are critical to any commercial success of fuel cell technology that may, for example, replace the internal combustion engine. Fuel cells convert the energy of chemical reaction directly into electricity with no intervening heat/power cycle. And the only product of reaction is water.

Another faculty member has created a consulting firm that is owned and operated by undergraduate students. The firm, called “ChemEngine,” grossed $50,000 in consulting contracts in its first year of operations and $147,000 in its second year just ended. The students garner contracts from industry, form teams with the necessary backgrounds in EE, ChE, or whatever, gather data, design and perform experiments, keep books, pay salaries, invoice clients, make oral presentations, and deliver final written reports.

The research of another faculty member under an industrial grant was so successful and implications were so great that the company retained that faculty part-time. The company, a Japanese firm, pays the apportioned salary, benefits, and overhead to the university.

Another faculty member has formed a university-wide Center for research and teaching in several aspects of bioengineering that include a merging of the techniques of microelectronics and medical sciences with chemical engineering. His company that is devoted to these same goals is located in the Biotech Research Park .

This “listing” is not at all comprehensive. It does, however, convey a sense of the extraordinary competence and devotion of the chemical engineering faculty to the seven defining characteristics of the School. The chemical engineering faculty holds their Ph.D. degrees from MIT, Caltech , Georgia Tech, UC San Diego, Delaware, and UC Berkeley, all of which are prominent programs in chemical engineering.

The chemical engineering program teaches core fundamentals through class work and through learning-by-doing experiences in required laboratories, research projects, a summer practicum under the mentorship of an industrially based engineer in an industrial setting, the senior design studio, and through optional participation in ChemEngine. Laboratory experiences include experiments with, for example, micro-reactors, fermentations, metallocene-catalyzed polymerizations, use of modern analytical instruments (FTIR, GC-MS, etc.), and supercritical extraction. Experience in unit operations is in large measure built around a small pilot plant for the synthesis of a drug that includes reaction and several separation processes. This micro-plant (2 kg of product per batch) was designed by a faculty member in chemical engineering and assembled largely by students, under his supervision.

The curriculum of 130 credits allows 9 credits of technical electives at the choice of the student. Popular choices include advanced math, business, and biotechnology. The faculty encourage students to select a cluster of courses that allow concentration in (1) Chemical Process Engineering, (2) Biotechnology and Bioengineering, (3) Molecular/Materials Engineering, or (4) Multidisciplinary Studies.

Some classroom innovations include teaching Thermodynamics to ChEs and MEs together for half of the semester. A similar team approach to teaching Process and Systems Dynamics was developed. Traditional freshman chemistry as an abstract science was restructured around an emphasis on materials. The courses in Organic Chemistry show students applications in petrochemicals, polymers, pharmaceuticals, and biotechnology. A required course in Industrial Chemistry displays the manufacture of, e.g., sulfuric acid and ammonia. Since industrial chemistry is catalytic chemistry, this important area is also emphasized.

The chemical engineering faculty awaits feedback from alumni and employers since only two classes have graduated. There are, however, early and very positive indicators. All 13 members of the first class have been placed in industrial positions or in graduate schools. One student had invited campus visits and offers from MIT, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Minnesota and the University of Delaware. Each host university paid all expenses associated with the visit. He enrolled at MIT. Another had similarly hosted campus visits and offers from Clemson, Georgia Tech, and the University of Colorado. He enrolled at Georgia Tech. Another had hosted campus visits and offers from North Carolina State , the University of Virginia, and Purdue. He enrolled at North Carolina State.

The feedback from these students is that they are doing well and feel fully competitive with their classmates from other programs around the country. Note that both MIT and Georgia Tech are in the top 10 ranked schools of engineering nationwide, and they each attract the very best graduate students from across the country and from many foreign lands. Some of the original 13 graduates received offers from industry that were well above the national average, and in one case, an offer included a $5,000 signing bonus. Most students had more than one offer.

The chemical engineering program also has feedback from the companies that employed students as summer interns. Each intern was rated in some 20 categories by about fifteen individuals at the host company, and 95 percent of these evaluations rated the intern as either “outstanding” or “good.” The students were rated as persons their companies would hire.

This description of the chemical engineering program at VCU is, of course, not comprehensive, but the essence of an innovative and imaginative and industrially relevant program should be clear.