(21a) 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.