What is Chemical Engineering?

Chemical engineering (ChE) is a respected and ideal profession for modern times and dynamic changing markets. It is broad, adaptable to a large family of businesses (i.e., petroleum, environmental, biotechnology, biomedicine, pharmaceutical, materials, food and others) and highly paid. Rooted in basic sciences, ChE is mainly concerned with the design, scaling (up or down), operation and control of the transformation and separation of raw materials into valuable products. Chemical engineers are the inventors of nylon fibers, artificial heart valves, nasal drug deliveries and efficient processes to clean our environment, to name a few.

What Does a Chemical Engineer Do?

A B.S. graduate in ChE, within her/his everyday responsibilities, works on challenging problems by integrating concepts of chemistry, physics, mathematics, computer sciences, and/or biology with engineering principles, overall profits, environmental impact, and societal effects all toward the design, production and control of valuable products.

Career Opportunities

Chemical engineers work in a wide variety of jobs, from production to research and development, in industries such as pharmaceutical, biochemical and biomedical, processed foods, cosmetics and, more traditionally, in petroleum, plastics, electronics, and environmental fields. In addition, they successfully find positions in government organizations, national labs and research hospitals. A bachelor's degree in ChE can even be the gateway to professions such as law and business administration because of the complexities in high-tech markets and intellectual property litigation.

Chemical Engineering at TTU

The Department of Chemical Engineering at Tennessee Tech is a vibrant community of engineering educators where both teaching and research synergistically work to effectively enhance student learning. In fact, Tennessee Tech is the home of some of the top educators in the region with most of the ChE Department engaged in active research on various aspects of student learning. These efforts have led to multi-award winning distinctions university-wide, nationally and internationally. ChE faculty members are frequently invited to conduct training workshops for colleagues in the United States and abroad and, therefore, students are exposed to some of the most effective and modern approaches in engineering education. The ChE curriculum is often revised to reflect changes in teaching pedagogy as well as shifts in the areas that hire our graduates, such as biotechnology, materials, and the environment.

For those interested in industrial careers, the Tennessee Tech experience has proven successful in a variety of businesses and national labs. For those more interested in graduate education, Tennessee Tech graduates can be found at some of the most prestigious universities in the country and have received fellowships from competitive agencies such as the National Science Foundation and Tau Beta Pi.