Professor Thomas Chapman Retires

After 32 years on the chemical engineering faculty, Thomas Chapman retired to take a position as program director for the National Science Foundation in the chemical and transport systems division.

Tom received his PhD in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1967, at which time he joined the UW Department of Chemical Engineering as an assistant professor. Tom was promoted to full Professor in 1976.

Thomas W. Chapman (34K JPG)

At UW Tom taught almost all of the courses in the undergraduate curriculum, but he specialized in the areas of transport and unit operations. On the basis of his research, he developed an elective course in modern electrochemical engineering, including laboratory experiments. The notes for that course were used to offer short courses, both locally through the Department of Engineering Professional Development and abroad. He also revised the UW transport phenomena laboratory course, developing new experiments, introducing new instrumentation and rewriting the laboratory manual for the course.

In his research, Tom worked on a variety of problems in various fields, including hydrometallurgical separations, electrochemical processes and environmental protection. He supervised 23 MS students and 16 PhD theses. For his early work on mercury separation and recovery, he received from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers the Environmental Division Award for 1974. A summary of his contributions to metal extraction appears as a chapter in the Handbook of Separation Process Technology. His work on modeling of electrochemical cells extended the capabilities for simulation and parameter estimation to a level of refinement not possible with earlier techniques. In the environmental area he frequently collaborated with colleagues in the UW Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Much of Tom's career was dedicated to international activities, both in technical assistance in development and for international education of American engineering students. As a member of a UW consulting team, he assisted in the development of the Surabaya Institute of Technology in Indonesia and later, as director of international engineering programs, he worked on a number of projects in Southeast Asia and Latin America.

As associate dean of engineering for international relations, Tom initiated numerous exchange programs and served as a national leader in engineering study abroad, helping to establish both the Engineering Alliance for Global Education (EAGLE) and the Global Engineering Educational Exchange network (GEEE). His leadership with EAGLE enabled more than 250 American engineering students to obtain professional experience in Japan. Following a sabbatical leave at the University of Oviedo in Spain, he established there a section of UW's chemical engineering summer laboratory course, which was held for the first time in 1999.