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Chemical Engineering:
Year 1
A How-to Having a Successful Freshman Year
Tyler Carter

Tyler Carter
Reflective Writing
Portfolio
Seifert- 14
February 17, 2016

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Table of Contents
Introduction
.....
How to use this
guide.3
Whats in this
guide?...................................................................................................................
............3
Who would
benefit?.................................................................................................................
...............4
Resources
....

Introduction
..5
Khan
Academy
.6
Schaums
Outlines
..7

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ChemWeb
8
Undergraduate Societies...

Introduction
.9
National Society of Black
Engineers..9
Engineers Without
Borders....9
Key Terms.....
.10-11
Internship
Opportunities.....................................................................................................
.............................

Introduction..........................................................................................................
.....................................12
Alliant
Energy...................................................................................................................
.........................12

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INROADS...............................................................................................................
.......................................13
Black &
Veatch...................................................................................................................
........................14
Works
Cited....................................................................................................................
.........................................15

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How do you use this guide?

This section will help you decide if you find it useful to continue reading this resource
guide. It contains the contents of the guide, the intended audience of the guide, and necessary
knowledge for understanding the guide and its subject matter. I have provided you with the
hyperlinks to each of the separate resources, the purpose of them and instructions on how to use
them.

Whats in this Guide?

This guide contains the links to study aids and databases that are
relevant to having a successful freshman year as a chemical engineer. I
decided to include study aids rather than academic journals because they
would be more helpful to you, an incoming freshman. Upon my arrival to
Howard this past August, I had no prior knowledge of the chemical engineering
field. I then figured out in my first engineering class that detailed processes
used in Chemical Engineering arent yet relevant. These processes tend to be
the subjects of engineering academic journals. The list of key terms will include
some of the vocabulary used in future engineering courses and in the work
place.

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Who would benefit?

My intended audience for this body of work is incoming freshman or
transfer students majoring in Chemical Engineering at Howard University.
However, all undergraduate students interested in Chemical Engineering can
use this guide to help them navigate their first year as an engineering student.
This guide can also be a resource to biology and chemistry majors since the
first year of the chemical engineering curriculum is similar to both biology and
chemistry curriculums.

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Why these resources?

The following section is dedicated to the three sources that I feel would
be most helpful to you during your freshman year. I am assuming that youre
biggest struggle next year will be learning how to study. Within the descriptions
of each resource, I explain how to use them and why they can be a resource to
you.

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Schaums Outlines
What are Schaums Outlines?
They are the key to success in any math or science course. These books
provide an abbreviated explanation of every topic that youll cover in your
Calculus I or General Chemistry I classes and all future math and science
courses. In addition to an explanation, there 1000s of answered problems,
some with worked out solutions. Schaums will be one of your key resources
because there will be times when on-campus tutoring sessions or other online
resources wont be enough. There are online articles that say that you must
study chemistry 90 minutes a day in addition to reading class notes everyday
to increase your chances of an A. Furthermore, you will learn that you need to
dedicate 30- 60 minutes of studying to every class so using these outlines will
give you access to additional problems outside of your textbooks.

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Khan Academy
Khanacademy.org
Whats the purpose of Khan Academy?
Khan Academy is another online resource for explanations in math and
science in the video form. The founder, Sal Khan, explains and demonstrates
the solution to multiple problems in each video. This will be an excellent tool
for you because it will help you reinforce topics covered in your classes.
Repetition is the key in engineering. Knowing the building blocks in math and
science courses increase your chances of mastery. Using Khan Academy will
help you master those building blocks. Watching these videos will contribute to
your daily 90 minutes in chemistry also.

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ChemWeb
chemweb.org
ChemWeb is an online source that provides Howard students with free
access to academic journals and databases relevant to chemistry and chemical
engineering. On this website you can find articles about research projects or
computational chemistry. If youre interested in Biochemistry or
Bioengineering, you will be able to find articles that give you, as an
Figure 1: Screenshot of All Math Tutorials Available

undergraduate student, a stronger understanding of these fields. Exploration is

a very important aspect of your undergraduate experience and ChemWeb is a

source you can use to begin this process. Now it might be difficult for you to

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truly understand the subject matter of most of these articles because you are
just a freshman, but exposure is important.
Using this website is very simple. It has separate tabs for databases,
journals and a variety of other tools. For example, if you click the Database tab,
it will take you to the page that shows all of the accessible databases with their
corresponding descriptions. Most of the databases then have a similar layout
that also allows you to search anything within the database.

Undergraduate Societies
Introduction
This section of the guide explains two undergraduate societies that would
enhance your undergraduate experience as a chemical engineer. They also
assist you with preparation for life after graduation.
National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)
NSBE is an organization that was founded with the goal to provide a
network to minorities in engineering. Howards chapter has technical writing

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workshops, resume building workshops, and mock interviews available to its
members. This organization can be used to your benefit from your first
semester until your last because there are always opportunities on campus and
elsewhere when a resume is required. In addition to career readiness
preparation, NSBE will allow you to connect with other engineers after
graduation. Attending NSBE meetings as early as possible will best prepare you
for future job searches and interviews.
Engineers Without Borders (EWB)
An engineers course load is a lot more demanding than any other major,
which has its pros and cons. All the classes you have to take will definitely pay
off in the end but while you are pursuing your undergraduate studies, you
might not have access to the same study abroad opportunities and your Poly
Sci. friends. EWB eliminates this issue. Engineers Without Borders is a
nationwide organization whose goal is to send future engineers abroad to solve
worldly problems during the summer. The Howard University chapter has sent
their students to countries such as El Salvador, Kenya and Brazil to work on
water filtration and purification.

Key Terms

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The terms listed below are terms that you will see frequently in the workplace
and in your engineering classes. Your first encounter with them will be in your
Introduction to Engineering Design class freshman year.
The potential goals of chemical process synthesis are to make a product
that has a specific desired function, to convert waste materials into useful
products, to improve the performance of a natural material, and to convert
material into energy. This is important for chemical engineers because we
utilize all this information to analyze how much money a client or company is
losing or gaining in a chemical process.

We then use chemical process synthesis to create a generation

consumption analysis (GCA). GCA is a systematic method for synthesizing
reaction pathways involving multiple chemical reactions with the goal of
making the most product of the least raw material, with the fewest byproducts.
GCA also allows us to calculate the moles of raw materials consumed in
generating a given quantity of product, and the moles of byproducts generated
per mole of product.

A byproduct is a secondary product in a chemical reaction. In other words, it

is an inevitable product that isnt the desired product in a chemical reaction.

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Examples of raw materials are air, water, minerals, fossil fuels and
agricultural and forest products. The combination of raw materials and other
reactants will produce the desired product and byproducts.

Separators are machines that are designed to separate raw materials,

byproducts and waste in hopes to reuse byproducts and waste in another
chemical process. Your third year Separation Processes course will cover these
machines more in depth.

Process flow diagrams are compact and precise diagrams that present a
large amount of technical information about chemical processes. They tell the
amount of raw materials entered, any physical or chemical changes that take
place, and the products that leave.

Steady state processes are those that are time independent; process
variables do not change with time. Unsteady state processes are those that
have one or more variables time dependent.

A chemical process plant is a physical facility in which the raw materials

undergo chemical and physical changes in order to make the desired products.
This is where most of us want to end up after graduation. This is where all the
processes take place.

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Engineering ethics is the field of applied ethics and system of moral
principles that apply to the practice of engineering. It examines and sets the
obligations by engineers to society, to their clients, and to the profession. You
will use the engineering Code of Ethics throughout your entire career. It is
important that you understand your personal limits before committing to any
project. Engineering ethics helps you do that.

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Internship Opportunities
Introduction
The internship opportunities in the following section are those that I have
access to now as a current engineering student, but there will be many
opportunities similar to these ones when you become an undergraduate
student. Moreover, Howards curriculum will prepare you for all of the following
internships.
Internship at Alliant Energy
This summer internship program is designed for mechanical and
chemical engineering majors of all classifications. Possible responsibilities for
interns include providing field-testing set up and support, data recording,
analysis, diagnostics and reporting, and driving the reliability and costeffectiveness of one of our top generating stations by researching, designing,
and implementing reliability upgrades for critical plant equipment. Your second
year Chemical Engineering Calculation class will prepare you for the
responsibilities of this internship.
Qualifications:

Candidates pursuing a bachelors degree in mechanical or chemical

engineering.
Must have completed your freshman, sophomore, junior or senior year.
Proficiency in Microsoft.
Some interns require travel to field locations.

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INROADS
INROADS is an organization whose goal is to provide for college students
in all fields with paid internships and potential full time careers after
graduation at major corporations. It provides a career mentor, resume building
workshops, and mock interviews to prepare each student for their interview at
each corporation. INROADS also requires each applicant to have 2-4 summers
available for job placement.
Qualifications:

Maintain a 3.0 GPA.

Be a full time undergraduate student
Willingness to relocate
Have at least 2 summers to commit to the program

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Black & Veatch Summer 2016 Intern Program

This program requires its interns to schedule project deliverables; collect,
organize, and evaluate date; and to organize and file project materials and
references. You will be prepared for these tasks after your first year at Howard.
The purpose of this internship is to learn how to apply the knowledge that
youre getting from early engineering courses as early as possible.
Qualifications:

Mathematical skills, problem skills, and computer skills

No experience required.
Enrolled at an ABET accredited university Chemical Engineering program.
Minimum accumulative GPA: 2.75

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Work Cited
Khan, Sal. "Khan Academy." Khan Academy. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Apr. 2016.
"Internships Internship Search and Intern Jobs." Internships.com. N.p., n.d.
Web. 08 Apr. 2016.
"Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books,
DVDs & More." Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel,
Computers, Books, DVDs & More. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Apr. 2016.