2. Hone interpersonal skills
Not all the development opportunities relate to technical matters. Successful engineering practice is strongly dependent on interpersonal and communications skills. It‘s important to learn about people, motivation, organizational behavior, written and oral communication and visual aids. With these skills as with any others, practice makes perfect (or at least very proficient).
In addition, remember that we are also ―business people‖ and, as such, should keep up on trends in the business world, particularly in our industry. These communications skills can help develop relations both within and outside the company.
Activities outside of the workplace can be good opportunities for enhancing nontechnical skills. They can help you improve interpersonal, leadership and communication capabilities.
For example, it‘s easy to get into leadership positions in volunteer organizations. All you have to do is attend some meetings and show that you‘re willing to help out, and soon you‘ll move right into whatever you want to do. 3. Do the whole job
You‘re probably familiar with the concept of ―completed staff work‖ (CSW). According to this concept, a subordinate presents his or her boss with solutions, or at least options, rather than problems. The reasoning is that the person closes to the problem is better prepared than anyone—even the boss—to make a decision and to implement it. Decision are best made at the lowest practical level.
Before passing your work on to the boss, try to make the work as complete as you can. That means not only writing the report, but also the cover letter and any transmittal notes it will need to flow smoothly through channels. Think through any political ramifications and make appropriate contacts to preclude problems. Anticipate questions and prepare for them. If your boss looks good, you look good.
By maximizing the quality and quantity of your work, you maximize your value to your employer. Learn to do many things well. Be the engineer who can write a project proposal, plan and perform experiments, design equipment, analyze data, develop a mathematical model, write and present results, and bring in the next job. If you do it yourself—or lead others in doing it—or you will be indispensable.
4.see the big picture
Many engineers with little experience view their job too narrowly. They‘re content to just do what they‘re asked. They may be creative in carrying out designated tasks, and they may see some minor extensions of it, but they don‘t explore widely enough.
But the ―big picture‖ is not just the concern of higher-level people. Everything that happens in the company affects all of its employees. In turn, each employee can contribute to the well being of the company.
You can get involved in long-range planning, business development, and diversification into new products or services. The people who are already involved in these matters will welcome your help. Although you might start out with a small role, you will soon be contributing more and more. Such efforts often begin by demanding a little more of your personal time, but are later sanctioned by your supervisors as you prove your capability. 5.Be a leader
There‘s always a need for leadership of technical activities, and many engineers are suited to this. Leaders aren‘t born; leadership skills are developed.
Leadership is different from management. For example, consider a large group of people in a jungle; their task is to cut a path through the underbrush. Managers recruit the workers, teach them how to use a machete, provide them with appropriate clothing, arrange their transportation to the job site and ensure that they are fed.
But the leader is the one at the front of the group, showing them where to cut the path. Pr perhaps the leader tells the group that this is the wrong jungle and they need to go elsewhere.
Managers take charge f administrative, executive and business matters. They supervise employees‘ work to make sure that operations are flowing smoothly. Leaders, on the other hand, are those who break ground, bring in new technologies, and point the way toward innovation.
You don‘t have to have any assigned management responsibility to be a leader. People respond to leaders—with or without prestigious titles.
As a matter of fact, you may be able to develop true leadership skills better if you don‘t have administrative responsibilities. When you don‘t have jurisdictional authority over people, you find other ways to influence them. Instead of ordering people to do things, you make them want to do them—and that is the best way. 6. Be a mentor
As we gain experience, we can help younger engineers develop their potential. People pick up a lot of their attitudes toward work, approaches to problems, and working methods from their senior colleagues. If you are a senior engineer, your impact on new employees is particularly strong and important.
New engineer should be able to take a sufficiently broad view of their jobs and not limits themselves. It is rewarding to accomplish work through others, to see them develop into stronger engineers and move into positions of more responsibility.
Sometimes part of your success as an engineer may be hiring or training someone who goes on to do things you can do yourself. You can help a promising engineer with capabilities beyond your own. And if you have a hand in developing someone who goes on to a really high position in your company, be proud of your accomplishment. 7. Beware of diversions
A multifaceted profession, engineering involves other disciplines. But think about your chosen path before becoming involved in a peripheral area.
For example, many engineers become enamored with computers. Today is personal computers can certainly enhance out productivity. Remember, however, that a computer is a tool just like a telephone or a calculator. Do not let yourself value the means over the end. If you are working on computer tasks that support personnel can do more efficiently, you are probably not employing your time well.
Some engineers are so fascinated to computers that they have in reality shifted from being engineers to being computer scientists. There‘s certainly merit in doing what you enjoy, but issue a caution. Remember that you had good reasons for going into engineering in the first place, and if you drift into another area, you may later find it difficult to return to your engineering duties.
Management is another popular diversion. For some engineers, going into management is a positive move. Management is challenging and rewarding, and many engineers are well suited to it. In addition, having an engineer-turned-manager is helpful to the other engineers. Moving in and out of management position, especially in the lower levels of management, can actually be good for an engineer‘s career.
However, the longer you stay in management, the more you run the risk of no longer being able to return to engineering. Most engineers who move into lower-level management positions are wise to regard them as a temporary diversion from their true profession. 8. Keep fit
Good health is essential to doing a good job. When you‘re fit, you have more energy and feel better generally. Thus you can put more onto your work, a well as into there aspects of your life. Because most engineers have predominantly sedentary jobs, it is important to eat carefully and get enough exercise.
9. Enjoy your profession
As professional engineers, we need to keep developing and broadening our skills. We need to expand the scope of our work and reach the full potential we have, to the benefit of both ourselves and our employer. For most engineers, the best job security is being able to do high-quality engineering work, which is always in great demand. Finally, we should relish the varied challenges and excitement that constitute engineering at its best.
Curriculum of chemical engineering
As chemical engineering knowledge developed, it was inserted into university courses and curricula. Before World WarⅠ, chemical engineering programs were distinguishable from chemistry programs in that they contained courses in engineering drawing, engineering thermodynamics, mechanics, and hydraulics taken from engineering departments. Shortly after World WarⅠthe first text in unit operations was published. Courses in this area became the core of chemical engineering teaching.
By the mid-1930s, chemical engineering programs included courses in (1) stoichiometry (using material and energy conservation ideas to analyze chemical process steps), (2) chemical processes or ―unit operations‖, (3) chemical engineering laboratories ―in which equipment was operated and tested‖, and (4) chemical plant design (in which cost factors were combined with technical elements to arrive at preliminary plant designs). The student was still asked to take the core chemistry courses, including general, analytical, organic, and physical chemistry. However, in addition, he or she took courses in mechanical drawing, engineering mechanics, electric circuits, metallurgy, and thermo-dynamics with other engineers.
Since World War Ⅱ chemical engineering has develop rapidly. As new disciplines have proven useful, they have been added to the curriculum. Chemical engineering thermodynamics became generally formulated and taught by about 1945. By 1950, courses in applied chemical kinetics and chemical reactor design appeared. Process control appeared as an undergraduate course in about 1955, and digital computer use began to develop about 1960.
The idea that the various unit operations depended on common mechanisms of heat, mass, and momentum transfer developed about 1960. Consequently, courses in transport phenomena
assumed an important position as an underlying, unifying basis for chemical engineering education. New general disciplines that have emerged in the last two decades include environmental and safety engineering, biotechnology, and electronics manufacturing processing. There has been an enormous amount of development in all fields, much of it arising out of more powerful computing and applied mathematics capabilities.
1. Science and Mathematics Courses Chemistry
Chemical engineers continue to need background in organic, inorganic and physical chemistry, but also should introduced to the principles of instrumental analysis and biochemistry.
? Valuable conceptual material should be strongly emphasized in organic chemistry including that associated with biochemical process.
? Much of thermodynamic is more efficiently taught in chemical engineering, and physical chemistry should include the foundations of thermodynamic. Physics. Biology.
? Biology has emerged from the classification stage, and modern molecular biology holds great promise for application. Future graduates will become involved with applying this knowledge at some time in their careers.
? A special course is required on the functions and characteristics of living cells with some emphasis on genetic engineering as practiced with microorganisms. Materials Science.
? Course work should include the effects of microstructure on physical, chemical, optical, magnetic and electronic properties of solids.
? Fields of study should encompass ceramics, polymers, semiconductors, metals, and composites. Mathematics.
Computer Instruction.
? Although students should develop reasonable proficiency in programming, the main thrust should be that use of standard software including the merging of various programs to accomplish a given task. Major emphasis should be on how to analyze and solve problems with existing software including that for simulation to evaluate and check such software with thoroughness and precision.
? Students should learn how to critically evaluate programs written by others.
? All courses involving calculations should make extensive use of the computer and the latest software. Such activity should be more frequent as students progress in the curriculum. Adequate computer hardware and software must be freely available to the student through superior centralized facilities and/or individual PC‘s. Development of professionally written software for chemical engineering should be encouraged.
2. Chemical engineering courses Thermodynamics.
? The important concepts of the courses should be emphasized; software should e developed to implement the concepts in treating a wide variety of complex, yet interesting, problems in a reasonable time. The value of analysis of units and dimensions in checking problems should
continue to be emphasized.
? Examples in thermodynamics should involve problems from a variety of industries so that the subject comes alive and its power in decision making is clearly emphasized. Kinetics, Catalysis, and Reactor Design and Analysis.
? This course also needs a broad variety of real problems, not only design but also diagnostic and economic problems. Real problems involve real compounds and the chemistry related to them. ? Existing software for algebraic and differential equation solving make simulation and design calculation on many reactor systems quite straightforward.
? Shortcut estimating methods should be emphasized in addition to computer calculations.
? The increased production of specialties make batch ad semibatch reactor more important, and scale-up of laboratory studies is an important technique in the fast-moving specialties business.
3. Unit Operations
The unit operations were conceived as an organized means for discussing the many kind of equipment-oriented physical processes required in the process industries. This approach continues to be valid. Over the years some portions have bee given separate status such as transport phenomena and separations while some equipment and related principles have not been included in the required courses, as is the case with polymer processing, an area in which all chemical engineers should have some knowledge.
?Transport phenomena principles can be made more compelling by using problems form a wide range of industries that can be analyzed and solved using the principles taught.
?Some efficiency may be gained by teaching several principles and procedures for developing specifications and selection the large number of equipment items normally purchased off-the-shelf or as standard design.
?A great deal of time can be saved in addressing designed equipped such as fractionators and absorbers be emphasizing rigorous computer calculations and the simplest shortcut procedures. Most intermediate calculation procedures and graphical methods should be eliminated unless they have real conceptual value. Process Control.
?This course should emphasize control strategy and precise measurement in addition to theory. ?Some hands-on experience using current practices of computer control with industrial-type consoles should be encouraged.
?Computer simulation of processes for demonstration of control principles and techniques can be most valuable, but contact with actual control devices should not be ignored. Chemical engineering laboratories.
?Creative problem solving should be emphasized.
?Reports should be written as briefly as possible; they should contain an executive summary with clearly drawn conclusions and brief observations and explanations with graphical rather than tabular representation of data. A great deal of such graphing can be done in the laboratory on computers with modern graphics capabilities. Detailed calculations should be included in an appendix.
?Some part of the laboratory should be structured to relate to product development, Design/Economics
?In the design course in engineering, students learn the techniques of complex problem solving