2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

United States chemical engineering department heads and chairs were surveyed in spring and summer 2024 about specializations, such as minors, concentrations, and emphases. This included all departments with “chemical engineering” in their name. Out of the 43 responding institutions, 19% offer no specialization. Minors and concentrations are each offered by around 38% of departments, and other specializations are offered by 28% of departments. The most commonly offered minor and concentration is bio-related. The wide variety and number of bio-type specializations (bioengineering, biochemical, etc.) led to this result. “Other”, with multiple pre-medicine specializations, was the next most prominent. Concentrations covered mostly different areas from the minors: biomolecular, computation/data science, sustainability, petroleum, premedical, and environmental. Other specializations overlapped minors and concentrations with other bio-related fields, environmental/sustainability, and pre-medicine/health but added categories of pulp/paper/bioresource and energy. Departments have added new minors in biomedical, chemical engineering, and materials engineering in the past ten years. They have also added data science/analytics concentrations and bio-related and environmental/sustainability other specializations. A few departments have removed materials and bio-related specializations.
Requirements to complete about specializations varied across the reporting institutions. Minors typically require about 17 credits, which is more than the 13 or so required by concentrations or other specializations. Students have on average 12 open engineering/technical/chemical engineering credits that they may use toward a specialization. Elective courses from the major may be double-counted as part of a specialization without restrictions at more institutions (72%) than required courses (33%). Departments are nearly evenly split on allowing undergraduate research and/or internships to count towards a specialization. Those who did allow research or internship credit frequently had quality requirements or a restriction to 1 or 2 semesters or 3 – 6 hours. Minors appear on the student’s transcript at all responding institutions. Concentrations are transcripted at only half of the institutions, and other specializations at 40% of institutions. Approval is needed at the department level and commonly at college and university levels but not as often by a governing board, trustees, or regents (35% and lower). Concentrations require college and university approval at lower rates (50%) than minors and other specializations (70% and higher). Most institutions did not report restrictions on specializations, but two institutions reported that chemical engineering majors are not allowed to earn a chemistry minor.
Chemical engineering students complete specializations outside of the department, with chemistry and math the most common by a factor of two. Other specializations from outside the department were computer science, business, biochemistry, materials science, and other bio-related areas. The median for BS graduates completing a minor of any kind was 45% and about 30% for concentrations and other specializations, each. The specializations offered by the departments may be taken by more than chemical engineering majors, with an average of about 20 students per year completing minors and other specializations offered by the department and 28 per year completing concentrations.