It is my pleasure to share with you our department e-newsletter, containing highlights of some of the most memorable events, awards, and other news over the past year. I am honored to have served as department chair over this period of time, working with our faculty, staff, and students to improve our academic and research programs.

As you will see, we are working to elevate the department to new heights. We have wonderful new faculty to provide our students with new and exciting areas of research and to educate them about frontier developments in chemical engineering. Our staff continue to innovate and work tirelessly to support our faculty and students, and for that they have received worthy recognitions. Our students continue to garner University and national awards and recognitions. In many ways, all of this is possible thanks to support from alumni like you.

Over the past year I have learned much about what our faculty, staff, and students do and where help is needed. One thing I recently learned is that about 90% of our graduating seniors have had at least one internship or research experience, and many have had several. I am proud of our students and faculty for this. However, I have also observed that our students, student organizations, and faculty need and deserve additional support. Every year the department receives many more requests than we can support for travel assistance so that our students can attend national professional meetings to present their work or participate in professional development activities. Our student organizations want to participate in national competitions, such as those sponsored by the AIChE, but lack funding to attend meetings or build prototypes. Students in our foundational classes could benefit from peer tutoring but the department lacks funds to support students to provide this help. On the other hand, our faculty and staff could benefit from continuing education and professional development in areas such as novel instruction methods and how to better prepare students to be leaders in the future workforce.

For these reasons, I ask that you consider donating to the Department Excellence Fund.

I thank you in advance for your consideration and look forward to hearing from you in the future.

Carlos M. Rinaldi-Ramos, Ph.D.
Chair, Department of Chemical Engineering
Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering