Message from the Chair - August 2022

Dear alums and friends,

I hope you are well and enjoying some time to relax and renew this summer.

Thank you to those of you who submitted travel photos. You are an important part of the CHEE family, and we appreciate news of your adventures, professional milestones and life transitions.

Congratulations, Graduates!

A warm welcome to the 63 undergraduates and 29 graduate students who joined the ranks of CHEE alums on Saturday, May 14 at the Student Union Memorial Center. More than 500 family members and friends gathered for the department’s first in-person convocation since 2019. We recognized each graduate individually and acknowledged several students for their outstanding service and academic achievements.

Completing a degree in chemical or environmental engineering is no easy feat in the best of times, and students demonstrated extraordinary resilience, courage and determination in the face of the pandemic. You did it, and we are so proud of you!

Faculty News

Congratulations to Jim Field, professor and associate dean of graduate studies, who was named the College of Engineering’s 2022 da Vinci Fellow. Jim conducts groundbreaking research on the biodegradation of explosive compounds and turns every stone to help his students build successful careers. 

Assistant professor Vicky Karanikola is co-leading a National Science Foundation-funded project to establish small-scale-food-energy-water (FEW) systems in rural and Indigenous communities. 

Andrea Achilli was promoted from assistant to associate professor – a well-deserved achievement and a testament to his strengths in research, teaching and service.

CHEE Hires Second Undergraduate Advisor

Lauren James, a former middle school and online science teacher, joined CHEE’s staff in May as an undergraduate advisor. She brings vitality and a love of teaching and learning to her role. 

Lauren is thrilled to be working with students one-on-one to help them achieve their educational goals. She joins Lori Huggins to support CHEE’s 300+ undergrads. We’re excited to have such a strong and vibrant team guiding our students to success.

Renovations & Upgrades

We’re still thriving in the very same space where you earned your degree – the John W. Harshbarger Building. But we’re also investing in keeping facilities current.

Thanks to a Provost Investment Fund grant awarded in 2019, CHEE is wrapping up its most comprehensive undergraduate lab upgrade in more than a decade, adding an elevator to the pit for ADA compliance, installing fume hoods, developing new experiment modules, and increasing the number of experiment stations. 

Our goal with the next round of renovations is to maximize the unit operations environment, modernize faculty labs, create a welcoming central advising suite for student support and upgrade student lounges.

We’re upgrading lighting in the unit operations lab and renovating several faculty labs with paint, improved flooring, and new benches and hoods. Work is slated to begin this fall to create an advising suite near the west entrance to Harshbarger with offices for two undergraduate advisors, our graduate advisor and an administrative associate. Old Engineering room 157 has been transformed into a graduate student lounge, replete with two couches, a large screen TV, a refrigerator and several enormous bean bag chairs for lounging and relaxing. Finally, the infamous “green room” undergraduate lounge is being gutted and remodeled.

Visit us any time – we’d love to show you the improvements!