Ramblings of a Chemical Engineer: A Book Review

Ramblings of a Chemical Engineer is significantly influenced by the author's personal experiences as a chemical engineer who has worked in a variety of chemical companies. It encompasses his college years, time as a university researcher, and professional career; it is told in a fast-paced way via a succession of vignettes that capture the highlights of the events that formed him into the professional chemical engineer he is today. It was his intention to present information about a profession in chemical engineering to potential students seeking degrees in chemical engineering. It also acts as a guide for aspiring chemical engineers and future engineers, emphasizing what they should aim for and how much fun this profession can be.

Seeing With New Eyes: My Professional Development Expedition as an Engineer

Decision to be an engineer can be affected by hundreds of reasons. After a person successfully becomes an engineer, the next challenge is to pursue with engineering professional development, which is another context in the continuous learning process. I look through the lens of narrative inquiry and self-study to revisit my experiences in various professional developments such as research, design, communication, teamwork, critical thinking, problem solving and others. Looking back more than three decades ago, I discovered the important turning point where I decided to be a chemical engineer. It was from that point of time; I gradually develop my engineering identity which is very crucial to the establishment of an indispensable engineer mind-set and character. Formal and informal education before, during and after university era combined as a meaningful chemical engineering roller coaster expedition. The excitement of learning new knowledge and gaining unique experience everyday resulted to the build-up of a matured chemical engineer. After a while, the process gracefully transformed from personally gaining to the integration of continuous learning and sharing, to benefit likeminded chemical engineering community. By showing this personal journey, I hope to enlighten the progression of professional development of an engineer.

Use of the Learning Management System (LMS) at the Instituto Tecnológico de Oaxaca

Educational platforms are tools that facilitate the teaching learning process. The LMS platforms: Edmodo, Schollogy and Moodle complement this process between students and professors. The use of these platforms was analyzed at the Technological Institute of Oaxaca, with the participation of students from the following careers: Electronic Engineer, Electrical Engineer, Civil Engineer, Mechanical Engineer, Industrial Engineer, Chemical Engineer, Business Management Engineer, Computer Systems Engineer, Bachelor of Administration and professors; all of them agree with that the most used platform is Moodle. One of the main objective is identify and classify the LMS used by students of the semesters: second, fourth, sixth, eighth and tenth, as well as teachers during the period January-June 2019. In addition, it was analyzed the use of LMS and the percentage of students and professors who use the platform as a teaching-learning strategy is determined. For the analysis of the use of LMS in the Technological Institute of Oaxaca, the methodology that was considered consists in the next phases: problem statement, definition of objective, elaboration of the theoretical framework, elaboration and analysis of surveys, process design and conclusions.

Whose Woods These Are

This chapter focuses on the early life of George Davis, a person who turned the idea for his doctoral dissertation into a big map that transformed life in the North Country. The chapter mentions how Davis worked on plans to preserve the Adirondacks for seven years, then spent another fifteen years fighting to protect those plans. It narrates Davis' work for a commission, which analyzed Adirondack Park's privately owned land in 1970. He found that most of this land was owned by just 626 families, each of which had more than 500 acres. The chapter then shifts to introduce Paul Schaefer, a leader of a coalition of conservation organization who fought the plan after a state agency made a proposal to build several more dams inside the Blue Line to provide flood control and hydroelectric power in the 1940s. The coalition claimed that it violated the Forever Wild clause. It also illustrates how Schaefer, chemical engineer Almy Coggeshall, and generations of activists defended wilderness against the thousands of snowmobiles breaking the silence in woods all over the Adirondacks. Ultimately, the chapter reviews how one can preserve the natural integrity of nearly pristine ecosystems while also letting people who live nearby build homes, take vacations, cut down trees, and dig minerals out of the ground.

Anniversary Professor dr.ing. Gheorghe MARIA at 65 years old - teacher and scientist

Prof. Dr. Ing. Gheorghe Maria from University Politehnica of Bucharest (UPBuc.), Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering is a valuable scientist in Romania, being the successor and continuer of the Romanian school of (bio)chemical reactors and reaction engineering, but also the creator of novel courses in the (bio)chemical engineer curricula at UPBuc. His research interests include a wide range of classic but also modern border fields, namely (bio)chemical reactors, kinetic modelling, bioinformatics, chemical reactors risk analysis, modelling dynamics of cell metabolic processes, of gene regulatory circuits, and of controlled drug release. Following the large number of international cooperations (20), its scientific productivity is impressive, including over 230 papers in ISI journals and intl. Conferences, 11 ISBN books (RO,USA), 5 teaching books (UPBuc., RO), and 6 ISBN book chapters abroad. Their practical realizations include the design and putting into operation of an industrial plant in Romania (at Petrochemical works /Refinery Brazi-Ploiesti, Romania, PWBP,1985), of a lab-scale pilot plant in Switzerland (Paul Scherer Inst., 1992-1998), or a safety-based optimization of a semi-batch (SBR) reactor (at CIBA-Novartis, Basel, 1994-1996). Based on these multiple contributions, it can be stated that Prof. Maria has had a significant impact on the science and the practice of Chemical and Biochemical Reaction Engineering in Romania and world-wide, his publications being well cited (Hirsch index 20, I10 index 49, more than 1400 citations). In 2019 he joined (unanimously by votes) the Romanian Academy. as a correspondent member.