2015 AIChE Annual Meeting Proceedings

(423b) Development and Assessment of a “Unit Operations in Food Engineering” Course

Author

Applied Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer is a junior level core chemical engineering course offered at X, using the textbook Unit Operations in Chemical Engineering (McCabe, Smith and Harriot).  Recently, two sections of the course have been offered, due to increasing enrollments.  Normally the two sections would be identical.  However, interest in food science and engineering by students and the faculty member led to the decision to convert one of the sections of Applied Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer into a “Unit Operations in Food Engineering” course.  Approximately half of the students have enrolled in the new version of the course.

All of the ABET outcomes and departmental learning objectives are the same for both courses.  However, the topics covered and examples are significantly different.  This paper will discuss the various textbooks available and the advantages of each, along with a list of the topics covered in the course.  Unique homework problems and projects will be presented, along with an assessment of their success.  Three hands-on classroom exercises have been developed, and their contribution to student learning will be described.  Finally, an assessment of student learning compared to the standard course (both taught by the same faculty member), including a summary of the topics omitted and discussion of the possible impact, will complete the paper.