A Course In Chemical, Pharmaceutical And Food Processing

We have developed a course which covers the process fundamentals, design, and strategy of chemical, pharmaceutical and food processes. The course is targeted to seniors and Professional Masters of Engineering (MEng) students of several engineering fields. Besides students from the chemical discipline, we have attracted students from civil and environmental, electrical, materials, mechanical, operation research and industrial engineering. These fields participate in the MEng Option in Manufacturing coordinated by Cornell's Center for Manufacturing Enterprise. The course is almost equally divided into its three components with each component taught by a different instructor. In the past three years we have co-taught this course, we have found the pharmaceutical and food parts of the course to be popular electives with chemical engineering seniors. These students take only these two parts of the course as the first part covers basic chemical engineering material which they have already assimilated in prior courses. Non-chemical engineering students are required to take the chemical portion of the course as some of the basic principles needed in the other parts of the course are covered in this first part. These students thus take the chemical processes portion as a pre-requisite to the pharmaceutical or/and food processes, whereas chemical engineering students enroll in either or both pharmaceutical and food processes. Each portion of the course is worth 1 credit hour in a variable (up to 3) credit hours course.