A curriculum with breadth and depth

Building on the foundation of the Clarkson Common Experience, the chemical engineering curriculum gives students a solid background of the knowledge and skills necessary to practice chemical engineering in traditional and emerging fields or pursue a higher degree.

The chemical engineering curriculum includes a number of math and science courses in addition to required chemical engineering classes and technical electives. The freshman year courses serve to provide a solid background in mathematics and the basic sciences and are common to all freshmen engineering students. Students begin their study of the discipline in the sophomore year, with courses in mass and energy balances and two thermodynamics courses. Students are introduced to transfer processes in the junior year, with courses in fluid mechanics, mass transfer and heat transfer. Juniors also take their first chemical engineering lab course and can take their process control course as well. In the senior year, students complete their chemical engineering science courses with a course in chemical reactor analysis. The chemical engineering fundamentals learned throughout the curriculum are applied in the senior year with two design courses and the second chemical engineering lab course.

In addition to the 33 credits in required chemical engineering courses, students must take two engineering science electives and two technical electives. The technical electives can be any science, engineering or math courses. Students also take three undesignated electives, which can be satisfied with any course. This curriculum provides students with a solid grounding in chemical engineering principles and provides them with some flexibility to pursue minors or concentrations to or sample a broad range of different elective courses. Many students chose to add concentrations in biomolecular engineering, biomedical and rehabilitation engineering, environmental engineering, or materials engineering to their chemical engineering major.

The chemical engineering curriculum can easily be adapted to fit into a transfer student schedule.

In order to graduate, a student must have a minimum of 120 credit hours and a cumulative total grade point average of at least 2.000. Any student may take up to 19 credit hours per semester. Beyond this, the student's advisor must approve and must inform the Student Administrative Services in writing. An additional tuition fee will be charged per credit hour over 19 credit hours a semester.

Course descriptions can be found on the Student Administrative Services (SAS) website.