(516g) Teaching Process Safety from Different Perspectives: Bringing Together Academics and Practicing Engineers to Improve Process Safety Instruction in Chemical Engineering.

For faculty who have spent all or most of their career in academia, teaching the practical application of chemical engineering fundamentals to process safety can be challenging, as their exposure to CPS in the process industries is limited. Even for those who have considerable experience in evaluating hazards in a research laboratory setting, the differences between this experience and that of an engineer working in a process facility are considerable.

One way that some programs have addressed this is to invite industry professionals to be guest lecturers in their courses, either as temporary or adjunct instructors to teach a designated process safety course, or as visitors to deliver a few lectures in capstone courses such as process design. The knowledge that these outside experts can share with the students is significant, but they are often not trained in teaching methods or educational pedagogy, so there can be gaps in their ability to adjust teaching methods and assess the understanding of the students over the course of a semester.

The overall educational experience for the students can be enhanced by collaboration between individual professors/departments and industry professionals who are willing to share their knowledge to help train the next generation of chemical engineers. In this presentation, we will discuss our experience of cooperation between a Teaching Professor and a process safety industry professional, as well as methods we used to improve process safety instruction for students in dedicated process safety courses at our institutions.