Message From the Department Chair: December 2019 Newsletter
Dear alumni and friends,
This edition of Engineered for Success is all about connections and gratitude – themes that reflect the holiday season as we gather with family and friends and consider what we are most thankful for in our life.
Class of ’69 Reunites
It was a great pleasure to welcome eight members of the chemical engineering Class of 1969 back to the Harshbarger Building for their 50th reunion on Dec. 1.
Joined by retired associate dean and professor Bill Cosart, their stories brought to life what the department was like in the early days, and they enjoyed meeting faculty and students, touring the unit operations lab, and learning about developments in the department.
Alumnus Ed Trujillo, who retired in 2017 from a faculty position in Utah, gave me one of his more than 50-year-old lab reports – typewritten the old-fashioned way, with beautifully hand-scripted equations. I enjoy showing it to students, who page through it, bewildered and amazed.
“If I had to choose a pervading emotion from us, it is the sense of gratitude that we have for pursuing a chemical engineering degree,” said Humberto Teran, summing up sentiments from the reunion.
Alumnus Pays It Forward
A generous gift from Class of 1969 graduate Scott Roberts will enable CHEE to hire students to work in the unit operations lab during the next five years. The department is exceedingly grateful for his thoughtful contribution.
“Working in the lab was so formative to my life and career that I want to pay it forward,” Roberts said.
The donation is a boon as we modernize the undergraduate lab with funds from the University of Arizona provost’s office. Several students will benefit from the kind of hands-on, practical experience that had a powerful influence on Roberts’ 35-year career with Royal Dutch Shell.
Bolstering Attendance at AIChE Conference
I’ve been speaking with the 15 students and three faculty members who traveled to the American Institute of Chemical Engineers conference in Orlando, Florida, in November, and I’m struck anew by how important it is that our department have a presence at the conference.
The networking and learning opportunities are career-changing for students and career-building for faculty. We are discussing ways to support student attendance, build our presence and revitalize the Chem-E-Car club so students might enter the conference competition in the future.
Announcing 2020 Crowdfunding: Experiments on Wheels
Thanks to you, we nearly tripled our goal with the inaugural crowdfunding campaign last year – The Grand Spectrophotometer Challenge – and we are pleased to announce CHEE’s 2020 campaign.
Our goal with the undergraduate lab renovation is to create a flexible space and add a range of experiments to keep current with new developments in our discipline.
CHEE research professor and lab manager Greg Ogden will work with students to build an array of new experiments on rolling carts, including demonstrations of hydraulics and fluid flow, ethane hydrogenation, and reactive distillation to make biodiesel.
Stay tuned for the launch of the campaign next semester. And please feel free to contact me at muscat@email.arizona.edu or Holly Altman at haltman@email.arizona.edu if you are interested in helping promote this effort.
Happy Holidays!
We are so grateful for our connection with you – alumni, colleagues, friends – and wish you a safe and happy holiday season.
Warm regards,
Anthony Muscat
Professor and Department Chair
Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering
The University of Arizona
muscat@email.arizona.edu