Examining Current and Historical Events in a Freshman Chemical Engineering Seminar

Freshmen entering the chemical engineering curriculum often have little or limited knowledge of the historical events that have shaped the chemical industry and the chemical engineering profession. Examples of such events include Love Canal, which led to the establishment of Superfund, and the 1973 Oil Embargo, which resulted in the chemical industry critically examining their use of energy. However, this year's freshmen were exposed to one such historical event during the summer of 2010 as the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill and cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico became the focus of the national news media. A second environmental event occurred in Europe in October 2010 the release of toxic red sludge into the Danube River basin in Hungary. The impact of an environmental accident may be widespread, and can devastate not only pristine nature areas and wildlife, but also the social and economic realities of communities adjacent to the accident site. Many of these students have vacationed on the beaches on the Gulf of Mexico since they were children; this history brings the harsh reality of the BP/Deepwater Horizon spill and its devastation on the communities along the Gulf Coast into much sharper focus for this generation of students. We believe integrating environmental case studies such as these into the curriculum contributes to the important growth in students toward becoming ever more aware of environmental and global impacts of such occurrences. The unfortunate recurrence of such events emphasizes the critical importance of our students being aware that they must always be sensitive to the potential impacts of engineering and applying lessons learned to their future engineering practice. An assignment was developed where each student team investigated a recent or historical environmental/chemical accident, with the assignment culminating in a poster presentation to the rest of the class. Incorporation of this activity into the freshman seminar allowed the students to gather information regarding an event and assess its impact with respect to society, economics and the environment. The result is a valuable learning experience for the students at a critical juncture (i.e. prior to the start of their co-operative education or internship rotation) as they begin to understand how engineering and engineering decisions not only determine profits and produce marketable items, but also impact society in many different ways.