Syllabus

Chemical Engineering Seminar

Spring 2025

Instructor:

Nam Sun Wang
Class Hours: Wednesday 2:00pm-2:50pm (Section 0101, CHE2116); Wednesday 11:00am-11:50am (Section 0102, CHE2145)
Office Hours: Wednesday 12noon-1pm, 3pm-4pm, Rm 1208 Chemical Engineering Bldg.
Other Hours: By appointment or email nsw@umd.edu in Rm 1208 Chemical Engineering Bldg.
Phone: 301-405-1910

Required Textbooks:

None.

Recommended Readings:

Prerequisites:

Junior or senior standing.

Contents:

The course will be guided by the following description taken from our university catalog: To develop oral communication skills through a series of class presentations of current chemical engineering topics. (In this class, we will deliver oral presentations & submit a written resume).

In class, each student will present 4 talks, usually ~8 minutes in duration, followed by a 2-minute discussion period, for a total of ~10 minutes. Each student is responsible for selecting a suitable topic that has not been presented previously. Everyone is expected to participate actively in the ensuing class discussion by asking questions and providing constructive critiques.

Grading:

The end-of-semester grade will assessed as the average grade of one interview (5%), four presentations (75%), and active participation in class discussion and constructive comments provided to fellow students (20%). Each class absence, which prevents a student from active class participation, typically translates to lowering the end-of-semester letter grade by 1/3 (e.g., from "A" to "A-").

Alumni Interview

Select from a list of alumi your top 3 choices to interview (due 2/14). Based on your top choices, one will be assigned to you. You will contact your interviewee to set up a time/date to conduct the interview, conduct the interview, and write up a 2-page summary (due 04/04).

Oral Presentations:

  1. Oral #1. A description of yourself (including past professional experience, if any) and "My Dream Career in Chemical Engineering" (1 page description/essay + 1 page professional resume, due 1/31) (8-minute presentation, no visual aid, outline 2/12, 2/19, 2/26).
  2. Oral #2. A Piece of Equipment or Process (8-minute presentation, outline, poster/device; 3/05, 3/12, 3/26). Possible content:
    • History & invention
    • Working principles, process flow diagram
    • Show a model or an actual device
    • Chemical process equipment (heat exchangers, distillation, extraction, reactors, etc.), computer, household appliances, etc.
    • Chemical process (refinery, fertilizer, energetic materials, desalination, gasification, etc.)
  3. Oral #3. Topic with Equations, Graphs, and/or Tables (8-minute presentation, outline, PowerPoint slides; 4/02, 4/09, 4/16).
  4. Oral #4. Contemporary Chemical Engineering Topics where chemical engineers significantly contribute, including hardcore technical topics and higher order soft topics such as safety, ethics, IP, and entrepreneurship (8-minute presentation, outline, PowerPoint slides; 4/23, 4/30, 5/07).
In class, each student will present 4 talks, 8 minutes in duration as indicated above, followed by a 2-minute discussion period. It is important that you stay within the time limit. Each student is responsible for selecting a suitable topic that has not been presented previously. You are encouraged to discuss your choice with the instructor prior to your presentation.

In addition to absorbing the technical information presented by your classmates, carefully observe their styles and be alert. You are expected to participate actively in class discussion by asking questions and providing constructive critiques. Everyone takes notes and completes the peer evaluation on ELMS/Canvas, ideally at the end of the class but no later than the end of the day.

Visual aids (slides or posters) are to be uploaded to ELMS/Canvas before the beginning of the class during which you are to give the oral presentation. A brief outline is to be given to the instructor at the beginning of the class during which you are to deliver the presentation.

Presentation #1. My (Dream) Career in Chemical Engineering

(A Sample Outline)
  1. Who am I? What kind of person am I (or aspire to be)?
  2. Educational & Professional Background
  3. Why Chemical Engineering
    • What is Chemical Engineering?
    • What does a Chemical Engineer do?
  4. My First Professional Position
    • Job Hunting Plans
    • Strategy
    • Type of Companies/Institutions
    • Type of Job Responsibilities/Descriptions
    • Selection Criteria
    • My positive/negative attributes, challenges
  5. My Dream Career
  6. Short-Term Plans: Post-Graduation
  7. Long-Term Plans: 10 to 20 Years from Now
  8. How do I want to be remembered? ("my obituary")

Presentation #2. Poster on Equipment/Process

We often make presentations where the format of the visual aid is not PowerPoint slides. One such common type is a poster, where we organize all supporting information in one single panel. It may be one single process flow diagram with labeled parts, or a common 3-column format with various sections: title, abstract, introduction, results, conclusion, acknowledgment, reference. Be sure the important primary parts are clearly visible, while secondary supporting information (such as acknowledgement and references) may be small. Be sure you know everything that appears in your visual aid.

"Aid" in visual aid means "help". You may need to re-draw or re-label the equipment or the process diagram to enhance visual impact. Constant eye contact with the audience remains the most crucial factor. Try to face the audience as much as possible, looking at the visual aid only minimally. You should not be looking at the visual aid when there is nothing to look at. You should not be looking at the visual aid and search for what to point to; you should already know exactly where it is, but just need to look at it briefly to be sure you are pointing at the correct location. Let yourself be the audience's main focus and let the visual aid serve its role as the help that it is, not the other way around. Let the story be told by your mouth and the rest of your body, not by the visual aid. This is analogous to how a good book tells its story with words/text, not supplementary illustrations.

Examples are chemical engineering processes (e.g., refinery, ammonia synthesis, cement, paper, beer fermentation, biopharmaceutical production, bioethanol, etc.), how things are made (e.g., battery, tomato sauce, chocolate, potato chip, biomedical device, cooking, CPU chips, baseballs, instant coffee, etc.), chemical engineering equipment (e.g., distillation columns, packed bed reactors, heat exchangers, pumps, compressors, refrigerators, etc.)

Presentation #3. Equations & Graphs

In a technical presentation, we often rely on equations and graphs to help advance our story. Pick a topic where at least one of the slides contains an equation and you explain the equation to the audience. You should define and explain the symbols. What is important in presenting an equation is not to read the equation but to convey what the equation means, what each term means, compare/contrast different terms, importance/magnitude of different terms, how each variable in the equation relates to other variables, how the equation is applied (possibly with examples), and how to solve it (if the solution is not obvious). Always tell a story, and equations are only a part of the visual aid and help tell your story, not the other way around. There are many technical examples: reaction rate expression, Michaelis-Menten enzyme kinetics, reactor design equations, heat transfer equations, distillation equations, Laplace transforms, Navier-Stokes equation, Boltzmann distribution, Schrodinger equation, equations for predicting the upcoming March madness...

Likewise, at least one of the slides should contain a graph and you use the graph to advance/support your story. The graph itself is perhaps a supporting part of the story, but usually not the main story. We sometimes let the graph drive the story by focusing on explaining what the graph means, but always return back to the main story. Use different graphs to emphasize different points: a pie chart to emphasize how the whole comprises different parts, a bar graph to show the effect/magnitude of different causes, a line graph to show the general trend, a 3D surface plot to show the maximum/minimum location, a heat map to show the distribution and hot spots, etc. Do not forget to label axis and associate numbers with physical units.

Presentation #4. Contemporary Chemical Engineering Topics

Oral Presentation Evaluation

  1. Choice of Topic
    • Appropriate
    • Interesting
  2. Preparation
    • Technical Accuracy and Thoroughness
    • Outline (Written and Oral)
    • Visual Aids (Quantity, Quality, Information Content)
    • Practice
  3. Presentation
    • Overall Effect
    • Introduction
    • Body
    • Closing
    • Content
    • Timing
    • Organization (Flow of Thought, Clarity of Explanation)
  4. Demeanor
    • Personal Impression
    • Reading, Eye Contact, etc.
    • Fidgets, Hesitates, etc.
    • Speech Clarity, Speed
  5. Grade on a scale of 0-10, with 10 being the best. Use the full 0-10 scale, instead of an uncritical, inflated, compressed scale (e.g., 9.9-10).

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Chemical Engineering Seminar -- Syllabus
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Nam Sun Wang
Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-2111
301-405-1910 (voice)
301-314-9126 (FAX)
e-mail: nsw@umd.edu ©2025 by Nam Sun Wang
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