Study ChBE in London This Summer!

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Top: View of London. Middle: Windsor Castle. Bottom: Stonehenge. Photos courtesy of Joseph Lim.

Under-graduates majoring in chemical engineering (ChBE) will once again have the opportunity to participate in a dedicated study abroad program thanks to a partnership with the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech).

Rising seniors can earn credit for both ENCH 437 (Chemical Engineering Laboratory) and ENCH 468L (Special Topics in ChBE: Unit Operations—London) while studying at Imperial College, a world-class science, engineering, medical and management school located in London, England. Participating University of Maryland students register at Georgia Tech as non-degree-seeking students, and credits earned are treated as transfer credits. The program runs from June 28—July 23, 2010.

This year, two $1000 merit-based scholarships will be available to students participating in the program.

The course covers topics such as heat exchange and transfer, evaporation, steady state heat and mass transfer, distillation, rheology, viscosity measurements of Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids, thermodynamics, reaction engineering, kinetics, and vapor-liquid equilibrium. The program is limited to 25 participants.

"This is a great opportunity to get time-intensive courses out of the way and see how engineering education is done in other countries," says Joseph Lim, one of four Maryland ChBE students who participated in the program in the summer of 2009. "A really unique aspect of taking the classes at Imperial College was their pilot plant. I don't think many other colleges have an entire plant dedicated to just one experiment. It felt like industrial experience, and I got a sense of what engineers actually do."

"Taking these classes [at Imperial College] allowed me a lot of extra room in my schedule senior year," says Helen McDermott, who also spent summer 2009 in London. "You can get six credits out of the way in four weeks, and it's probably easier than taking those classes during the year. It's a lot of fun." Like Lim, she also considers the pilot plant the best part of the course: "We got to model it, start it up, run it, control it, and shut it down."

It's not all work, however—the program includes field trips and leaves students enough personal time to explore on their own. Students visited destinations including Stonehenge, Bath, Windsor Castle, Venice, and Rome.

"We are so excited that we've been able to partner with this well-established program," says Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering professor and chair F. Joseph Schork. "Georgia Tech has been running it for over thirty years. It's an amazing opportunity for anyone but I especially urge our out-of-state students to consider it, because Georgia Tech offers in-state tuition rates for all students accepted into the program. You could actually save money and have the experience of traveling abroad."

Students interested in participating in the London summer program should contact Professor Schork at fjschork@umd.edu, and visit www.chbe.umd.edu/undergrad/studyabroad/ for more information. The first deadline for application and payment is February 15, 2010.

Published December 7, 2009