2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The chemical engineering field is constantly evolving to encompass new ideas such as genetic engineering and synthetic biology, green chemistry and sustainable materials, and engineering education. This evolution has been seen throughout the undergraduate curriculum with the development of new courses or certificate programs as reported on in the literature. The progress reported in the undergraduate programs has influenced us to investigate if there are any similar shifts in graduate program curricula. In this work, we studied the 2021-2022 chemical engineering Ph.D. curriculum at 100 U.S. universities to gain insights into the courses that students take, as well as other degree requirements to obtain the terminal degree in chemical engineering. The institutions were chosen from the best chemical engineering programs, U.S. News & World Report 2022. The data for the study was collected from the institutions’ websites, as well as personal knowledge of the programs. We found that majority of the core required courses remained the same as reported by David Kauffman in 2002, and include transport phenomena, thermodynamics and reaction engineering. There was however an increase in the diversity of elective courses which are offered by the departments, including safety and communication courses. The study also investigated other program requirements such as participation in the seminars and teaching assistantship positions. We found a high percentage of schools had required teaching assistantships and seminar attendance as part of the program. Through these findings, we hope to identify future evolution in the graduate chemical engineering curriculum.