17497728/06/$30.00+0.

00
# 2006 Institution of Chemical Engineers
Trans IChemE, Part D, 2006
Education for Chemical Engineers, 1: 116 125

www.icheme.org/ece
doi: 10.1205/ece.06020

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING CURRICULUM RENEWAL

V. G. GOMES1 , G. W. BARTON1, J. G. PETRIE1, J. ROMAGNOLI2, P. HOLT3, A. ABBAS4,
B. COHEN5, A. T. HARRIS1, B. S. HAYNES1, T. A. G. LANGRISH1, J. ORELLANA1, H. T. SEE1,
M. VALIX1 and D. WHITE1
1

School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The University of Sydney, NSW, Australia
2
Department of Chemical Engineering, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA
3
Ecological Engineering, Prahran, VIC, Australia
4
School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
5
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

ased on results of our own research and stakeholder surveys, the School of Chemical
and Biomolecular Engineering at The University of Sydney has identified a number
of imperatives for curriculum change, and has used this stimulus to embark on the
task of curriculum renewal. First, the desired graduate attributes were determined, followed
by the design of mechanisms needed to integrate these within the curriculum. The curriculum
was designed to incorporate an integrated framework for teaching all core concepts, enabling
technologies and engineering practice paradigms. The new curriculum was introduced in
stages, commencing in 2004. Each unit of study comprises several modules, most supported
by problem-based learning. Integration within, and between semesters is vitally important,
and is enhanced by team teaching, which has also helped to provide a sense of peer-support.
Assessment against sets of competencies rather than differentiated grading was introduced for
core technical courses. Students progress between years of study with a greater understanding
of the inter-relationship between the analytical, synthesis and practice components of the curriculum. There are a few issues to resolve, but several positive features have emerged so far.
The positive reviews of the new curriculum by the Accreditation Panels of both Engineers
Australia and the Institution of Chemical Engineers, as well as comments from student representatives, have been significant confirmations of our approach.
Keywords: curriculum design; chemical engineering education; graduate attributes;
accreditation; problem-based learning.

INTRODUCTION

level of competencies from engineersversatility in a

range of areas, not just the core technical domain. Hence,
the urgency to design a curriculum to deliver well-educated
engineers capable of contributing to all aspects of sustainable development in an increasingly competitive world
(Clift, 1998; Westerberg and Subrahmanian, 2000;
Crosthwaite et al., 2001; Cussler and Moggridge, 2001;
Gomes et al., 2000; Gomes, 2002).

Until recently, the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

curriculum at the University of Sydney could be described
as a traditional, well-taught programme, representative of
curriculum styles followed internationallyalmost invariably based on unit operations with a petrochemical design
capstone project, and all taught in a classical teacher/
student mode. Its style and content had remained largely
unchanged since the 1970s.
However, the engineering profession has been undergoing change at a rapid pace. The 20th century saw our
engineering discipline grow at a staggering rate and the
fruits of that growth have permeated almost all aspects of
peoples lives. The key drivers for change include social,
economic, technical and geopolitical needs. A key factor
to consider is that employers are demanding a greater

STIMULI FOR CHANGE

Chemical Engineering educators and professional bodies
have been flagging a changed situation and recommending
remedial action for some considerable time (IEAust, 1996;
Woods et al., 2000). These realizations have been slow to
translate into practice. The recent curriculum renewal
process by the School of Chemical and Biomolecular
Engineering, University of Sydney, marks an overdue
initiative to engage with these challenges.
A number of tensions have arisen in the educational
sector recently due to professional and student imperatives,


Correspondence to: Dr V.G. Gomes, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
E-mail: vgomes@chem.eng.usyd.edu.au

116

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING CURRICULUM RENEWAL

117

each driven by their respective needs. The professional

imperatives include:
. evolving new subject areas;
. a rapidly emerging knowledge-based economy;
. an inexorable trend towards globalization (including
tertiary education);
. interdisciplinarity;
. intrusion of market forces in shaping education.
It must be noted that over the last 10 years, both tertiary
institutions and professional bodies have been formalizing
their views on desired graduate attributes, both generic
and technical. The urgency to map these attributes within
any proposed curriculum has been underlined by their insistence for quantitative feedback on how these attributes are
being integrated and monitored.
Based on student reviews and course evaluations, the
school identified the following specific issues from a student perspective:
. perception of a high (often too high) work-load;
. lack of integrated teaching and learning;
. failure to identify relevance of certain courses in the
overall programme;
. chronic dissatisfaction with the quality of the learning
experience.
From the staff perspective, the key issues were:
.
.
.
.
.
.

a need to promote learning over teaching;

shifts in employer expectations;
increasingly broader employment options;
wider range of attributes desired;
diversity of student background and choice;
new technological developments and the impacts of
information technology;
. need for a student-centred rather than a content-driven
approach (since students are the immediate beneficiaries
of the education process);
. funding and resource pressures.
Given the multitude of stakeholders and drivers, the school
felt it appropriate to consider the fundamentals of the education process and its alignment with current needs. A key
instrument here is the curriculumthe blueprint or plan for
directing student progress. Such a plan is made up of integrated aims, contents, methodology, and evaluation procedures. To aid in understanding the evolution of our
revised curriculum, it is useful to consider the environment
in which learning occurs. Figure 1 shows the connections
between the learning process and the initial/boundary conditions that must be taken into account for achieving
desired outcomes. Notice that the student characteristics
and approaches occupy a focal point within the learning
nexus.
From surveys of the various stakeholders and an assessment of the drivers for change, it was concluded that the
curriculum must achieve the following:
. provide a road-map for the multiple stakeholders in
charting the graduation process;
. include adequate mapping of graduate attributes, both
technical and generic;
. describe the overall philosophy and position the individual units of study within the overall context;

Figure 1. The learning nexus in higher education.

. specify the principles of organization of the content

including the knowledge and outcomes of the units
with built-in flexibility;
. sequence the contents along a path of development,
adopting a stepwise progression from less to more complex knowledge and capabilities;
. broadly define the problem-solving contexts;
. apportion content into manageable units for teaching and
learning in the time slots available;
. enforce horizontal and vertical integration between units
of study.

THE CHANGE PROCESS

The school started the curriculum renewal process by
establishing a task-force comprising all staff members
involved/concerned with teaching and learning. The discussions and committee focus were moderated by a coordinator. This committee started from the fundamental
question of what makes a good Chemical Engineer? and
how the School related to its geo-political position (that
is, for a university situated in Sydney in the Asia-Pacific
region; see Barton and Petrie (2005) for a discussion
of the specific challenges which face such a school).
A full-time post-doctoral fellow was employed to aid the
process, working on gathering data and reviewing available
educational theory and experiences at globally relevant
institutions. The task-force met regularly (roughly every
fortnight) and encouraged open debate on a wide range of
considered issues.
Figure 2 gives an overview of the drivers shaping our
curriculum design process. Input from diverse sources
was soughtincluding the university, the wider engineering faculty, industry and professional bodies. Liaison with
industry and with professional bodies was facilitated by
the schools Chemical Engineering Foundation, a bridge
between the school and a consortium of industry representatives. Feedback from relevant stakeholders, including the
entire student body as well as their elected representatives,
was sought prior to finalising the content, structure and
delivery style of the new curriculum.

Trans IChemE, Part D, Education for Chemical Engineers, 2006, 1: 116 125

118

GOMES et al.
. problem-based learning (asking the right questions
again facilitation is key);
. student-centred learning (creating an enabling environment and providing appropriate directionthe focus
here is on mentoring aspects).

Figure 2. Inputs to curriculum design process.

Note that prior to even considering the nature/content of

our new curriculum, a number of preliminary issues were
addressed in some detail:
. Identification of key graduate attributes to be mapped
within the programme.
. Development of mechanisms for monitoring/quantifying
the attainment of these graduate attributes. Formal student surveys (for each existing course) were used with
consolidated management feedback at both the school
and faculty levels.
. Deconstructing the old curriculum in terms of content,
revising the material, and assigning it as either a core
skill, an enabling technology, as suitable for treatment
through project workor, indeed, discarding it
completely.
. Establishing a process whereby each individual course
could be reviewed for its content, teaching/learning
approach, and assessment procedures against the broader
degree aims.
A key question centred around what defines a 21st century
chemical engineer and how best to equip such a person.
Our approach was to crystallize the graduate attributes
desired by relevant stakeholders, particularly those
suggested by the University and a key professional body
(IEAust, 1996). The selected desirable attributes for our
graduates (given in the Appendix) are in stark contrast to
those of the past, where technical skills were almost exclusively the prime focus.
The key findings of this preliminary review were that:

In terms of a mathematical analogue, the task-force might

be thought of as attempting to solve an over-constrained,
multi-objective optimization problem for which a number
of possible solutions were known to be possible. In
these terms, the key point to appreciate is that no single
correct solution existsour redesigned curriculum was
simply one acceptable (in our eyes) option.
This curriculum redesign exercise took a period of 18
months, including the time to document the overall structure and provide detailed descriptions of the various
courses. Subsequent to dialogues with the key stakeholder
groups and fine-tuning the curriculum content, the road to
acceptance involved obtaining approvals from the various
governing bodiesthe school, the engineering faculty,
the university and the accreditation panels (Engineers Australia and IChemE). We have opted for a staged implementation of the curriculum, beginning with the early years, to
allow as smooth a transition as possible between the old
and new curricula. Currently we are at the stage of implementing the redesigned curriculum for fourth year students
and are thus in a position to review the overall change process (and its impact) over the first three years of our degree
programme.

CURRICULUM STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION

An overview of the organization of the curriculum in
terms of a hierarchical structure is shown in Figure 3,
where the core principles form the foundation and the electives denote aspirations for specialization. The structure is
aligned with Blooms taxonomy of intellectual activity
(Bloom, 1956): knowledge, application, analysis, synthesis
and evaluation. The connections to higher levels of learning
are facilitated by the enabling technologies and the designated courses based on practice and projects.

. active learning techniques should be a prime focus

throughout the programme;
. constructive alignment of assessment with learning outcomes would be crucial;
. team teaching of several modules is desirable to enable
integrated learning within each course;
. the generic attributes must be mapped across the course
curriculum.
To meet the aims of our conceptual curriculum, a spiral
learning model was adopted. Here, the overall curriculum is
focused on understanding chemical engineering fundamentals in increasing complexity and in an increasingly complex context. Such a learning model can be viewed as an
evolution of several active learning styles (Hadgraft and
Prpic, 2002) as follows:
. project-based learning (formulating appropriate and
interesting problemsfacilitation is the key issue here);

Figure 3. Curriculum organization hierarchy (Spl specializations/

electives).

Trans IChemE, Part D, Education for Chemical Engineers, 2006, 1: 116 125

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING CURRICULUM RENEWAL

Further details incorporated into the new curriculum
structure include:
. Scales of engagement: an organised transition from the
initial big picture (or macroscopic view) to a more
detailed microscopic view together with a reconciliation of perspectives between these multiple scales;
from core and enabling subjects to specializations;
from analysis to synthesis of processes; from continuum
to discrete systems; from differential to hybrid difference/differential systems; from simple to complex systems topics; from proposing and testing to evaluating
and managing.
. Stages of engagement: 1st yearmacroscopic orientation; 2nd yearmolecular and microscopic views;
3rd yearsuperposition of multiple scales; 4th year
comprehensive capstone design project and research
orientation (i.e., thesis).
. Each course to engage students in project work that
enables the development of design and research concepts
with cross-course projects to enable horizontal integration.
. Delivery of courses to be guided by aims, outcomes
and feedback integrated in a closed-loop sense.
. Encourage problem-based learning (through case studies,
mini-design projects) and life-long learning (through
research projects and enabling investigation).
In essence, it was agreed that the new curriculum must
develop technical competence and generic attributes simultaneously; incorporate contemporary themes that serve both
industry and the community; while the delivery must incorporate a decidedly integrative approach. Given our existing
(and anticipated) staff profile, the main educational themes
identified were:
. process/product design (both as a basic course skeleton
and as a unifying principle for integration);
. chemical engineering fundamentals (defined as core
organizing principles, molecular transformations, multiscale analysis);
. specializations (such as bio-, material and environmental
engineering);
. systems engineering approach, including sustainability
(in terms of a series of related courses that ran through
the entire programme as a unifying thread);
. research implicit content (in resonance with the universitys guidelines on research-led teaching).
In line with these themes, a suite of engineering tools (defined
as part of the overall content) must also be developed and
integrated. These tools included computing, modelling,
statistics and professional engineering skills. A just-intime delivery approach was favoured to allow learning of
material during its concurrent application. This approach
provides the motivation to learn the theory and the enabling
technologies as and when needed. This is achieved through
conducting project work that makes use of the tools developed
in concurrent courses in a semester. For example, instruction
in computer programming skills is synchronized with a
project conducted in a parallel course. The various courses
(four 6 credit point courses in each of two semesters per
year) were developed within the following categories:
(A) core courses emphasising the necessary fundamental
concepts;

119

(B) enabling technology courses providing skills needed

to problem solve;
(C) engineering practice courses (i.e., group work based
but with a strong individual assessment component)
to provide a problem-based learning (PBL) context;
(D) elective courses for specialization.
Table 1 summarizes the basic structure of the new curriculum. Columns (A) (D) reflect the corresponding categories as defined above. Note that first year is common
within the Faculty of Engineering with a flexible entry
policy that allows incoming students to be exposed to a
breadth of engineering before committing to a particular
branch by years end. The aim here is also to equip students
with a suite of skills for computing, generic professional
skills and an area of specialization for students committed
early to a specific discipline. An introductory course on
energy and mass balancing is thus available to students
who opt for chemical engineering rather than following
the fully flexible option during their first year.
It is worth noting that the names of our courses no longer
reflect the traditional options (such as Thermodynamics I or
Reaction Engineering II). The new nomenclature is
intended to allow incorporation of multiple modules
within any one course, provide a broader perspective in
learning material and to avoid compartmentalized courses
where concurrent or staged units of study bear negligible
relation to each other.
Curriculum Structure
Progress of a student from the early to advanced stages
within the curriculum is shown in Figure 4. In broad view,
Year 2 focuses on analysis while Year 3 focuses on
design and synthesis. However the scope of the latter is
much wider than a simple focus on large-scale, continuous
petrochemical processes (which are of course still considered, for example, in both CHNG3801 and 3803).
Rather the emphasis is on inculcating within students the
view that analysis and design are best considered simultaneously (i.e., each impacts on the other), rather than the
latter being a bolt-on to the former. Design is seen as an
important unifying principle underpinning the new curriculum. The (year long) design programme in the final year
reinforces and builds upon the relevant expertise that students have developed in the earlier (particularly third) years.
As they move towards graduation, chemical engineering
students must become increasingly aware of the (often
complex) interactions and trade-offs that occur between
technical, economic, social and environmental considerations. These issues are central to the design work carried
out in their fourth year. It should be noted that extensive
use has always been made in our school of experienced
industrial consultants to provide input on these matters.
In addition, several of the elective courses have components that explicitly deal with the wider context of engineering today (e.g., CHNG5002 Environmental Decision
Making and CHNG5003 Green Engineering).
The curriculum is both horizontally and vertically integrated with systematic progression within a year and
between years. The practice-based units of study require
that the student acquire the requisite theoretical knowledge
and enabling technology to proceed to their application.

Trans IChemE, Part D, Education for Chemical Engineers, 2006, 1: 116 125

120

GOMES et al.
Table 1. New chemical engineering curriculum structure.

Year 1
Sem 1

Mathematics & Science

Mathematics & Science

Engineering Computing

Introduction to Engineering
Disciplines

Year 1
Sem 2

Mathematics & Science

Mathematics & Science

Professional Engineering

CHNG1103 Mass & Energy

Transformations

(A)

(B)

(C)

(D)

Year 2
Sem 1

CHNG 2801
Conservation and
Transport Processes

CHNG 2802 Applied

Maths for Chemical
Engineers

CHNG 2803 Analysis

Practice 1Energy
and Fluid Systems

CHEM 2 Physical Chemistry

for ChE

Year 2
Sem 2

CHNG 2804 Chemical

and Biological
Systems Behaviour

CHNG 2805 Industrial

Systems and
Sustainability

CHNG 2806 Analysis

Practice 2Treatment,
Purification and
Recovery Systems

CHEM 2 Chemistry of
Biological Systems

Year 3
Sem 1

CHNG 3801
Process Design

CHNG 3802 Operation,

Analysis and
Improvement of
Industrial Systems

CHNG 3803 Design

Practice 1Chemical
and Biological
Processes

CHNG 3804
Elective

Year 3
Sem 2

CHNG 3805
Product Formulation
and Design

CHNG 3806
Management of
Industrial Systems

CHNG 3807 Design

Practice 2Products
and Value Chains

CHNG 3808
Elective

Year 4
Sem 1

CHNG 4801
Thesis A

CHNG 4802
Design A

CHNG 5001
Elective

CHNG 5002
Elective

Year 4
Sem 2

CHNG 4805
Thesis B

CHNG 4806
Design B

CHNG 5003
Elective

CHNG 5004
Elective

Categories

Further, design is revisited within the curriculum from the

early stages at various scales and levels of complexity. For
example, design in first year is based on macroscopic balances and in the following year is based on transport
equations or micro- and mesoscopic balances.
One key question that had to be addressed during our curriculum design is: what components in the original curriculum could be discarded to make room for new material. Our
approach has been to discard duplication of effort (e.g., by
teaching distillation as part of transport processes) and consolidate courses through modules (e.g., consolidating the
teaching of heat and mass transfer rather than using
separate courses). The aim was to not compromise on core
principles and yet provide options for students to gain
supplementary knowledge from electives of their choice.
Another important element of the new curriculum (and as

an aid to vertical integration), was to expand on the analogy

between natural and industrial systems). For example, a
course exploring the thermodynamics of chemical and
biological systems has its analogue in terms of industrial
systems and sustainability. Another course which examines
the operation of industrial processes (with a strong analytical
flavour) is paralleled with a course which explores the management of industrial systems, with a focus on professional
practice. We have endeavoured, as far as possible, to make
such comparisons explicit.
Problem-Based Learning and Practical Skills
Development
The problem-based learning (PBL) component within
the curriculum (Boud and Feletti, 1997) incorporates the

Figure 4. Progress in attributes and curriculum content.

Trans IChemE, Part D, Education for Chemical Engineers, 2006, 1: 116 125

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING CURRICULUM RENEWAL

agreed graduate attributes in due measure. PBL is a strategy
that is widely used in non-engineering disciplines such as
medicine and the health sciences. It poses significant, contextualized, real-world situations, while providing the
necessary resources, guidance and instruction to learners
as they simultaneously develop content knowledge and problem-solving skills.
The learning is highly student-focused and carried out in
small groups with the staff member being more of a guide
than a formal teacher. Inherent to project and problembased learning are needed skills for communication (both
oral and written) and teamwork (both as team member
and leader), and abilities in interpersonal relations, critical
thinking and reflective judgement. Examples of problems
posed recently involved designing an artificial heart, and
designing a bio-refinery among others.
Much of the PBL component of our new curriculum lies
within the engineering practice coursescolumn (C) in
Table 1. The emphasis is far removed from the student
simply getting the right answerwherever possible the
problem posed has no single correct solution. Rather
what is stressed is the entire process of problem formulation and resolution, directed towards reaching an acceptable solution (where acceptable may require the
consideration of a number of (possibly conflicting) criteria
within a climate of uncertainty), and reflecting on how such
a solution was obtained and what it means from the standpoint of engineering judgement.
A key physical resource which the school designed for
imparting practical skills is an integrated web-plant consisting of two main structural elements: (1) a hands-on
facility designed as a flexible process and product engineering
toolkit, consisting of reactors, separators, mixers, pumps,
valves, piping and instruments; and (2) a web-enabled interactive control system which allows both virtual experiments
as well as designing/controlling processes in addition to
studying their dynamics and scale-up. Human-machine interfaces have been developed to provide students access to the
web-plant both locally (at the laboratory) and externally
through a web-browser. These interfaces open the way for
delivering practical learning modules over the internet.
Practical skills are further strengthened through our Year
3 (semester 2) week-in-industry (WII) programme which
is followed by the course Practical Experience over a 12week period during the summer break. WII provides the
students with their first formal industrial engagement,
with teams of students solving a variety of significant
industrial problems during a one week placement. Practical
Experience consolidates this initial exposure through more
extensive industrial problem-solving. This industry
exposure is extended through a scheme called MIPPS
(Major Industrial Project Placement Scheme), allocated to
roughly the top third of the final-year class. These industrial research projects are conducted with students working
on designated sites for an entire semester with both industrial and academic supervisors. Thus the new curriculum
more than adequately addresses the issues of a practical
skills component as an important graduate attribute.
Whilst MIPPS does not engage the whole class, we have
witnessed a cross-fertilization between the two cohorts of
studentswhere professional practice skills picked up by
MIPPS students are passed on to non-MIPPS students
through concurrent engagements in the curriculum.

121

Single and Combined Degrees

In addition to our four year BE(Chemical) degree option,
students can opt for a five year combined degree which
allows them to complete two degrees in combination with
other faculties, such as BE/BCom, BE/BSc, BE/BA,
BE/LLB, BE/BMed Sci and others. About 30% of our
total intake every year (mostly the higher ranking students)
takes one of these options. Therefore, the new curriculum
had to seamlessly integrate all such students. Table 2 summarizes the overall structure for a single (4 year) degree.
Certainly combined degrees introduce additional complexity into the curriculum structure. After an initial transitional
period, the following arrangements apply:
. All combined degrees (except the BE/BA) comprise 144
credit points (CP) of science/engineering and 96 CP
from the associated degree.
. The BE/BA comprises 156 CP of science/engineering
and 84 CP of Arts.
Table 3 summarizes the science/engineering content for
a student doing any combined degree (other than the BE/
BA). This content is spread over 5 (rather than 4) years
and includes all the core engineering material taken by a
student doing a single degree. The approach here is that
combined degree students replace engineering elective
material with non-engineering elective material (which is
viewed by accreditation bodies as specialist material).
Constructive Alignment
There is a much greater emphasis in the new curriculum
on process and product technology while the use of systems thinking is now central to our approach to teaching/
learning. In terms of learning outcomes, the aim is to
ensure that all core chemical engineering material is covered by the end of third yearthus allowing for vertical
integration with a research-oriented thesis, design-oriented
courses and advanced electives that make up the final year
of our programme.
The new curriculum boldly addresses the issues of semesterization, compartmentalization and vertical and horizontal
integration between courses. Our model for integration, presented in Figure 5, illustrates how an integrated projectbased approach to teaching and learning is realised in stages.
The modes of delivery for course content are varied and
consist of a mix of lectures, tutorials, assignments, and
practical and laboratory work. What has changed significantly is the way the courses are integrated with respect
to each other and the design of modules within a course

Table 2. Overall structure for a single (4 year) BE(Chem) degree.

Component
Basic Sciences and
Mathematics
Generic Engineering
(Core) Chemical
Engineering
(Elective) Chemical
Engineering
Thesis and Design
Total credit points

Trans IChemE, Part D, Education for Chemical Engineers, 2006, 1: 116 125

Year 1

Year 2

24

18

18
6

30

48

48

Year 3

Year 4

36
12

24

48

24
48

122

GOMES et al.

Table 3. Overall structure for the science/engineering content of a

combined degree.
Component
Basic Sciences and
Mathematics
Generic Engineering
(Core) Chemical
Engineering
(Elective) Chemical
Engineering
Thesis and Design
Total credit points

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Year 4

24

18
6

30

36

48

36

36

24
24

that are held together through common themes (e.g.,

CHNG2804 includes thermodynamics applied in the physical, chemical and biological domains). Specific problems
in the form of case studies, major laboratory and design
and research projects are defined within each semester.
Note that it is these problems that act as the main integrating factor between the various courses. The teaching team
within a given course relies on driving forces such as those
coming from society, environment, research, industry and
state affairs to shape its problems. These ensure that the
curriculum remains robust through staying in touch with
new and emerging techno-sociological problems.
This integrated curriculum allows for knowledge structured around major concepts and principles, shaping of
knowledge by the context in which learning occurs, and
strengthening knowledge through experience and collaboration. In this context, both peer and self-assessment are
important components of the process that permits awareness and self-monitoring of learning.
Mapping Graduate Attributes and
Learning Outcomes
The new curriculum was evaluated for its systematic
mapping of the desired graduate attributes onto individual

courses. An example of this mapping (on a scale of 0 5,

with 0 denoting negligible emphasis and 5 as substantial
emphasis) for the attribute research and inquiry for Year
4 is shown in Table 4. As might be expected, this quality
is greatly emphasised in the core components for this
year, especially in the thesis and design-oriented courses.
The learning outcomes of an undergraduate course in
chemical engineering represent the chief qualities that the
course is designed to develop in a student who will go on
to practise in industry. An example of a set of objectives
and outcomes for an exemplar unit of study is given in
Table 5. The enhanced outcomes denote depth and the
extended outcomes denote breadth attained. Whilst the
high-level outcome statements themselves define course
objectives, somewhat more guidance is required by those
designing or accrediting a particular undergraduate
course. Since no tertiary programme can ever equip graduates with all the skills they will need to deploy over an
entire career, there will always remain a need for continued
professional development and thus any tertiary degree
programme should lay solid foundations on which further
education and training can be built.

Assessment
The objective of any assessment is to ensure that students
reach an acceptable level of competence. To meet this
objective, students are required to submit evidence relating
to their achievements. This can take the form of reports,
presentations, log books, plans, drawings, computer programmes, examination results and other reported material.
Within our new curriculum, the core and enabling technology courses during second and third year are assessed
solely for demonstrable competency (and are thus Pass/
Fail), while all other courses are graded (0 100).
In this context, attainment of competency is determined
to the satisfaction of both staff and students for a particular
course noting that a fixed numerical grade (e.g., above

Figure 5. Integrated chemical engineering curriculum model.

Trans IChemE, Part D, Education for Chemical Engineers, 2006, 1: 116 125

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING CURRICULUM RENEWAL

123

Table 4. Mapping of graduate attribute research and inquiry in Year 4.

Units of
study

Chemical
Engineering
Design 1
CHNG4201

Process Plant
Risk
Management
CHNG4402

Project
Engineering
CHNG4401

Practical
Experience
CHNG4001

Chemical
Engineering
Design 2
CHNG4202

Thesis
CHNG4002

Rating (05)

50%) is unaccepted as a cut-off mark for passing that

course. Rather, the bar for each course has been raised substantially depending on past experience and the contents
level of difficulty. This precludes a mind-set of simply
aiming for a 50% (or nearby) mark to demonstrate competency. This concept has been quite challenging for both
students and staff alike. However, with multiple forms
of assessments for the modules within a course, a wide
range of complementary information is available on
which to assess a students performance. Where team
teaching is involved, the staff consult among themselves
in some detail on assessment issues.
Even for the project-based units (where numerical grades
are reported to the university), final examinations are conducted to assess individual abilities and to avoid total
reliance on group-work marks. Further, the overall performance during a semester is taken into consideration
for determining student progress with the proviso that
students may carry a maximum of one failed course (for
a repeat) between subsequent years.

As a result of the tight horizontal and vertical integration

between courses, the school has implemented a student progression policy that enforces close to plug flow through
the entire degree programme. This has necessitated the
development of new assessment policies and guidelines
(including structured post-examination interviews of borderline students). It must be noted that enforcing such
lock-step progression through a degree programme has
proven to be a challenge. In a sense, students must attain
a holistic level of competence in a semester prior to progressing further in the degree programme. For obvious reasons,
students are not totally satisfied with this arrangement.
Experiences to Date
Recently, our revised and renewed curriculum design
received highly positive reviews from both the Engineers
Australia (EA) and the Institution of Chemical Engineers
(IChemE, UK) accreditation panels in terms of its innovation and intended service as a teaching support tool

Table 5. Example mapping of learning outcomes in a course (CHNG2805: Industrial Systems and Sustainability) highlighting extended and enhanced
components.
(A) Aims and objectives
(1) To develop awareness of the
concepts which underpin
Sustainable Development,
including technical and
economic efficiency,
stewardship of the bio-physical
environment, and social
acceptability.
(2) To examine the material
economy from the perspective
of open and closed
thermodynamic systems, and
the implications of this for
resource consumption and
waste generation.
(3) To explore governing
frameworks for Sustainability,
and engagement of chemical
engineers with these.
(4) To explore tools and
approaches for quantifying
industrys environmental
performance and to examine
within a Sustainability
framework.
(5) To consider how process/
product design and operation
can be informed by Green
Engineering principles, and to
suggest how this combination
of perspectives could lead to a
re-defined industry sector.

(B) Learning outcomes

(1)

(2)

(3)
(4)
(5)

(6)
(7)
(8)

Understanding the thermodynamic

basis of the material economy in
terms of resource consumption and
waste generation.
Understanding the philosophical,
social and political bases for
sustainability, in addition to the
technical, economic and
environmental ones.
Understanding the role of
technology in promoting
sustainability.
Understanding corporate
responsibilities with respect to
sustainability.
Quantifying the environmental
performance of industry (with
specific reference to the resource
and processing sectors) using
appropriate tools.
Interrogating governing
frameworks for sustainability to
support actions within industry.
Understanding trade-offs in
decisions which impact on
sustainability.
Being effective communicators of
sustainability arguments to all
stakeholders, and interpreters of
social and environmental concerns
in ways which can help shape
industry practice.

Core

Extended

Enhanced

Application

Design

50%

(A):2,4
(B):2,8

(A):3,5
(B):6,7

50%

(A):1,4,5
(B):5,6,7

Trans IChemE, Part D, Education for Chemical Engineers, 2006, 1: 116 125

124

GOMES et al.

(IEAust/IChemE, 2005). To provide the academic

foundation for corporate membership and registration as a
Chartered Chemical Engineer, IChemE accredited our
degree programmes at the MEng levelrecognizing the
degree of the highest international standards that both
deepen and broaden the knowledge base of their graduates.
Recent surveys of student cohorts have shown that our
new programme enhances student motivation, their focus
on self-directed learning, while allowing flexible learning.
There has also been a significant increase in student
engagement with the broader learning process. Despite
the raising of the bar and the multiple challenges facing
the enterprise, the percentage of students progressing
from second to third year was about 85% during 2005
which was most encouraging.
An important side-effect of adopting the new curriculum
has been team teaching (each course being taught by several staff members), which has been a departure from our
past practice. The extensive employment of this approach
with a staff coordinator for each course, for each semester
and for each year, clearly encouraged staff to adopt a consistent team-based and student-centred approach. This has
opened new doors for collaboration and for experimentation with teaching and learning options. Our experience
clearly underlines the importance of having all participants
(both staff and students) on-board as a teaching and learning collective if success is to be achieved. The School fully
expects that this cooperative approach will ease the challenges that no doubt still await us all.
CONCLUSIONS
The School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
has incorporated an integrated framework for teaching
core concepts, enabling technologies and engineering practice paradigms, in the first major redesign of its curriculum
in several decades. First, the desired graduate attributes
were determined, followed by the design of mechanisms
to impart them to the student population. The engineering
practice segment was established with a programme supported by a PBL approach. The new curriculum was introduced in 2004 in stages from Year 1 onwards.
The specification of the attributes was the first major
hurdle to be overcome as significant time and ongoing
debate are needed to develop a shared understanding and
ownership of the graduate attributes. Motivating staff to
get involved in unfamiliar territory as expected is a challenge, but team teaching has helped to provide a sense of
peer-support. Assessment against set competencies rather
than differentiated grading (e.g., on bell curves) was introduced for core courses.
Our instructional strategy moves students towards the
acquisition of knowledge and skills through a staged
sequence of problems presented in context, together with
associated learning materials and staff support. The principal idea behind PBL is that learners receive a problem, a
query or a puzzle that they must solve within a framework
that is centred upon the key problems in professional
practice. Thus, PBL is both a curriculum and a process,
requiring carefully selected and designed problems that
demand acquisition of critical knowledge, problem-solving
proficiency, self-directed learning strategies and team
participation.

Underlying issues with a traditional curriculum motivated changewe were not alone, nationally or internationally. The result is a highly integrated curriculum. There are
a few issues to resolve, but many positive features have
emerged so far. Accreditation clearly documented the process of change, motivations, methods and outcomes. The
positive reviews of the new curriculum by the Accreditation Panels and student representatives have been significant
confirmations of our approach.
REFERENCES
Barton, M. and Petrie, J.G., 2005. Small, agile and dynamichow to succeed as a small chemical engineering department in a changing global
environment, 7th World Congress of Chemical Engineering, Glasgow,
Scotland, July.
Bloom, B.S. (ed.), 1956, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals (David McKay, Inc., New York, USA).
Boud, D. and Feletti, G. (eds), 1997, The Challenge of Problem-Based
Learning (St Martins Press, NY, USA).
Clift, R., 1998, Engineering for the environment: the new model engineer
and her role, Trans IChemE, Part B, 76: 151160.
Crosthwaite, C., Cameron, I. and Lant, P., 2001, Curriculum design for
chemical engineering graduate attributes, ProceedingsWorld Chemical Engineering Congress, Melbourne, Australia.
Cussler, E.L. and Moggridge, G., 2001, Chemical Product Design (Cambridge University Press, NY, USA).
Gomes, V.G., Choy, B., Barton, G.W. and Romagnoli, J.A., 2000, Webbased courseware in teaching laboratory-based courses, Global J Engineering Educ, 4(1): 6571.
Gomes, V.G., 2002, Consolidation of engineering education through
industrial case studies, Intl J Eng Educ, 18(4): 479484.
Hadgraft and Prpic, 2002, Changing the mind-sets for student centred,
flexible learning, 13th Annual Conference, Australasian Association
for Engineering, Canberra, Australia.
Institution of Engineers, Australia Task Force (IEAUST), 1996, Changing
the Culture: Engineering Education into the Future: Review Report
(Institution of Engineers, Australia, Canberra, Australia).
IEAust/IChemE, 2005, Accreditation Report.
Westerberg, A.W. and Subrahmanian, E., 2000, Product design, Comput
Chem Eng, 24: 959966.
Woods, D.R., Felder, R.M., Rugarcia, A. and Stice, J.E., 2000, The future
of engineering educationdeveloping critical skills, Chem Eng Ed,
34(2): 108117.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors fully acknowledge with thanks the many inputs received
from all participants to our endeavoursespecially all school staff members, our industrial partners, and above all our students, who have stoically
endured being educational guinea-pigs. A special acknowledgement goes
to Professor Bob Armstrong of MIT Chemical Engineering, who has
been bold enough to champion this agenda on a global scale, and from
whom we have shamelessly borrowed ideas, which emerged from the
series of workshops conducted throughout the USA in 2003 and 2004.
The manuscript was received 7 February 2006 and accepted for
publication after revision 21 August 2006.

APPENDIX: GRADUATE ATTRIBUTES

Knowledge Skills
. Have a body of relevant technical knowledge;
. Be able to apply theory to practice;
. Be able to identify, access, organise and communicate
information in both written and oral form.
Practical Skills
. Be able to collect, correlate, display, analyse and report
observations;

Trans IChemE, Part D, Education for Chemical Engineers, 2006, 1: 116 125

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING CURRICULUM RENEWAL

. Be able to apply experimentally obtained results to new
situations;
. Be able to test hypotheses experimentally;
. Be able to apply technical skills.
Thinking Skills
.
.
.
.
.
.

Exercise critical judgement;

Be capable of rigorous and independent thinking;
Account for their own decisions;
Be realistic self-evaluators;
Adopt a problem solving approach;
Be creative and imaginative thinkers.
Personal Skills

. Have the capacity for and a commitment to life-long

learning;

125

. Have the ability to plan and achieve goals in both the

personal and the professional spheres;
. Have the ability to work with others.
Personal Attributes
. Strive for tolerance and integrity;
. Acknowledge their personal responsibility for their own
judgements, and their ethical behaviour towards others.
In addition to knowledge and application skills, the
above considerations recognise engineers as reflective
practitioners, for whom practice is informed not only by
established knowledge, but by critical reflection of the
impact of their practice in relation to expectations and
values of society.

Trans IChemE, Part D, Education for Chemical Engineers, 2006, 1: 116 125