Hougen Professorship Fund: Linking research and teaching

• Hougen Scholars Program
• The Hougen Symposium

Olaf Andreas Hougen (14K JPG)

The department's Olaf A. Hougen Professorship Committee recently took on an unusual (in today's economy, particularly) and enviable problem: what to do with an endowment fund that, through the outstanding generosity of our alumni and friends and careful investment by the UW Foundation, had outgrown its stated purpose?

Since 1979, the department has regularly invited distinguished members of the chemical engineering profession to Madison for extended stays as Hougen Visiting Professors. Over the years, these individuals have collaborated with faculty and student researchers, taught courses and presented public lectures in their areas of specialization, and developed texts, monographs, and other educational materials for a wider audience. This spring we will welcome our nineteenth Hougen Visiting Professor to the department: Eric S.G. Shaqfeh from Stanford University. Eric will present two public lectures and collaborate with faculty and students on research in his areas of specialization, including non-Newtonian fluid mechanics, non-equilibrium polymer statistical dynamics, suspension mechanics (particularly of fiber suspensions and composites), and diffusion/reaction in plasma etching processes.

Despite the level of activity that this fund supports, it has begun to generate income faster than we can spend it prudently for a visiting professorship. So the committee looked beyond the explicit statement of purpose for the fund to its underlying goals and objectives, and to the values of the man in whose honor the fund was established. As the more senior members of the department relate, Olaf Hougen had a keen sense of responsibility, and believed that leading research departments have an obligation to the profession and to society to work actively to strengthen the crucial link between the generation and dissemination of new knowledge.

From this consideration emerged two new programs: the Hougen Scholars Program, intended explicitly to allow research leaders in the profession to devote time to the development of educational materials; and the Hougen Symposium, an annual event intended to bring together a group of research leaders in chemical and biological engineering to exchange ideas and share with the public information on a topic of current interest to the profession and society generally.

Hougen Scholars Program

Last spring, John Yin was selected as the inaugural Olaf A. Hougen Scholar based on his proposal to develop biologically oriented instructional examples and problems for integration into the chemical and biological engineering curriculum. The examples and worked problems sought to introduce principles and concepts of biology while conveying or illustrating important chemical engineering principles. This proposal was motivated by a number of recent changes to chemical engineering: there is a growing demand for ChE undergraduates who have training in the biological sciences, many ChE departments around the country are requiring undergraduate coursework in biology at the molecular and/or cellular levels, and traditional ChE departments are increasingly changing their names to reflect research and instructional activities in both chemical and biological engineering.

The problems were developed for use by ChE instructors who have little or no background in biology. A major challenge for such instructors is to cut through the language barrier that separates them from interesting chemical engineering problems lurking in biological systems. The problems, which span principles of kinetics, thermodynamics, transport phenomena, and systems, are accompanied by solutions as well as notes for the instructor that indicate the key concepts or relevant chapters from established ChE textbooks. The problems are intended for adoption in standard ChE courses and are currently being tested and refined in the department's undergraduate courses. John plans to make the problems and solutions accessible via the web by this summer.

This year's Hougen Scholar, Jay Schieber (PhD '89) from the Illinois Institute of Technology will spend spring semester back in Madison collaborating with Juan de Pablo on a new textbook in thermodynamics. A draft of the text will be used this spring in CBE 211, Chemical Process Thermodynamics I and CBE 311, Thermodynamics of Mixtures. Jay and Juan will incorporate comments from the course instructors Ross Swaney and Eric Shusta, from others who have used their notes, and from referees identified by the publisher, McGraw Hill, as they prepare the final revision of the text. This text, in one of the core subjects in the undergraduate curriculum, will complement other recently developed texts in core areas: the second edition of Transport Phenomena published in 2001 by Bob Bird, Warren Stewart, and Ed Lightfoot, and the 2002 text by Jim Rawlings and John Ekerdt (BS '74), Chemical Reactor Analysis and Design Fundamentals. Regina Murphy is also developing an introductory text on process synthesis that is currently in final review and is projected for publication by McGraw Hill in January 2005. All together, recent activity at UW to develop educational materials for the chemical engineering undergraduate curriculum continues a long departmental tradition, and certainly would make Olaf proud.

The Hougen Symposium

Olaf A. Hougen (17K JPG)

The first annual Olaf A. Hougen Symposium was held this past September 17 and 18, with this year's topic, "Advances in Fuel Cell Science and Technology." Fuel cell technology is among the most promising for efficient, pollution-free and noiseless energy production. Fuel cells can operate under a variety of conditions and use several alternative fuels, including hydrogen and methanol, and the electrochemical nature of fuel cell power generation allows them to circumvent the thermodynamic limitation of the traditional internal combustion engine. Chemists and chemical engineers, including notably Jim Dumesic and Manos Mavrikakis of this department, are making substantial progress in meeting the many technical challenges associated with bringing fuel cells into large-scale use. Other invited speakers included Phillip N. Ross from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Eugene S. Smotkin of the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras, Andrzej Wieckowski of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Thomas A. Zawodzinski of Case Western Reserve University. Together they presented a fascinating view of the state of research in this active area. In addition, Peter Hoffmann, editor of The Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Letter, presented an engaging overview of the economics, politics, and public perception of fuel cells and the emerging hydrogen economy.