Saturday, February 19, 2011

JPW 2011

I have attached my slide show from Junior Parent's Weekend.  In it I give some evidence for the central importance of chemical engineering in societal issues, such as health care and energy --even to the point that prominent chemists think that they should merge departments with chemical engineers!  I also give some advice that students should work on "quick draw" implementation of the technical skills that they have.  A number of examples of real world situations in which a chemical engineer can give first order quantitative insight are given.  A second recommendation is to better develop conversational skills that include being able to talk about engineering in a mature way and being able to link engineering into other aspects of society -- which necessarily include economic and financial topics.  A third recommendation is that students -- soon to be grads -- need to be able to tell a good "story" about anything that is on their resume and that activities not related to engineering are both important (and useful on a resume) and can differentiate them from others.

The pdf is here:  Challenges and opportunities for chemical engineers.