Help Us Get Our Coursework Right

Bette Lawler

Expertise in strategic planning and implementation, membership development and marketing, communications and public relations management, event marketing and management,customer relationship management, procurement, and process management. Extensive expertise in Direct Marketing. A decisive, collaborative leader who builds relationships and effective teams in traditional and entrepreneurial environments.

July 06, 2010

Did you ever find yourself sitting in class wishing anyone had asked you what subjects to cover? Well now you can get your wish because AIChE is planning on offering on-line courses and you get a say in what we should be teaching. Engineers already know they need to keep their skills up to date and learn new things. You may have already attended an AIChE meeting or webinar to do just that. And starting in early 2011 you'll also be able to take more formal courses online. You'll be able to choose courses that are self-paced where you log in and work through the course material at your own speed. Or you can take an instructor-led course that meets over a set period of time (sort of like a semester). You'll earn Professional Development Hours (PDH's) for each course you successfully complete which you can use to meet PE and other requirements. Here's how you get to help shape the curriculum. A list of subjects appears below in the poll. Select the ones you'd be most interested in. If you have great idea that isn't listed just select 'Other' and provide a course title or subject area. View Poll Stay tuned for which classes make the cut. If you'd like to get more involved in coursework development and are interested in volunteering, check this post out.

Comments

Thanks for your feedback Elizabeth. We appreciate it.

I like the idea of self-paced, but on a schedule. If its set up in a semester format but all of the lectures or work is posted online and I can work my way through at my own speed that would be great - if a week is really busy, I can double up on the next week instead of missing a course.

We need more such courses - continuing education course on novel topics. I personally would like to see all of AIChE short courses (2-3 day courses) online. I think that may attract industries to buy a course for a group. Can we get to own a course/course material? Like a book, I should be able to download, collect and use it for my future references.

I personally would appreciate a back-to-basics class - movin' stuff through pipes style (but more practical material, and less theory). That is something I would definitely participate in.

I second that! After doing strictly Ops and Supply Chain for Electronics, people expect me to remember all my ChemE formulas - and I really don't. It takes me awhile to catch up, so a practical refresher course would be awesome.

I agree with the back to basic idea. Would also include more than just spreadsheet training courses, maybe MatLab, ASPEN or something along those lines. Keeping current on new/revised software could be helpful.

Thank you all for your comments. CEP started publishing Back to Basics articles last year, and we have heard comments that our readers find them useful. We are currently planning the 2011 Editorial Calendar, and we welcome your suggestions for specific topics that you would like to see covered in Back to Basics, as well as any ideas you might have for possible authors. Does your organization provide orientation training to new hires? Have you attended any short courses that you found valuable? Has a sales engineer or technical services representative helped you get up to speed? Please share your thoughts, either by posting comments here or by writing to me directly at cyntm@aiche.org. I look forward to hearing from you. Cindy Mascone CEP Editor-in-Chief

How about a class in how to manage a process? Like a mix of statistics and process control?

Maybe a kind of "Lessons Learned" or "Best Practises" course in specific areas. It would probably be really useful for recent grads that do not have years of work experience - there is a big difference between what actually goes on in a production environment than was mentioned in any of our textbooks. Helping students get ready for reality would be great and it could also let people in different industries better understand what goes on in a certain industry.

Best practices is a great idea. Bruce's suggestion on managing a process is another great area to train new hires/recent graduates. Six sigma training falls in this category. Six sigma for chemical engineers ??