UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — From the Chemical and Biomedical Engineering Building on Shortlidge Road to offices, labs and classrooms around the globe, nearly 10,000 alumni, 500 undergraduate and graduate students, and 45 faculty, post-doctoral candidates and staff call the Penn State Department of Chemical Engineering (CHE) home. This year, the department is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the establishment of a chemical engineering degree program at Penn State in 1924-25.
“As we celebrate this centennial, we marvel at the impact and importance of this program of which we are a part, and we recognize the strong foundation those before us have laid,” said Phil Savage, Walter L. Robb Family Chair and head of the CHE department. “While celebrating the tremendous impact made by Penn State chemical engineers over the last 100 years, we look forward to an even greater impact in the next century.”
Students, faculty and alumni gathered at the Penn Stater on Sept. 26 for the department’s annual distinguished lectureship dinner, which also served as a tribute to the program’s centennial. Nicholas Peppas, professor of chemical and biomedical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, delivered a lecture on intelligent and recognitive hydrogels for protein delivery and recognition.
Savage, Professor of Chemical Engineering Mike Janik and Harold and Inge Marcus Dean of the College of Engineering Tonya L. Peeples also spoke at the event to highlight notable achievements and people in the program’s history.
Though the first CHE degrees were awarded in May 1925, chemical engineering’s first flame sparked in 1890, when William H. Walker — known as “the father of chemical engineering” for his landmark textbook on the discipline — received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the Pennsylvania State College, to become Penn State. Named in his honor, the Walker Laboratory on Pollock Road was the first home of the program and was demolished in 1969, replaced by Davey Laboratory.
In 1902, the Pennsylvania State College introduced a degree program in industrial chemistry within the chemistry department, which focused its curriculum on industrial unit processes and manufacturing of chemical compounds. In 1924, the program was renamed as chemical engineering. In 1948, chemical engineering separated from chemistry into its own department, and, in 1963, joined the College of Engineering.
“Trailblazers like Dorothy Quiggle — Penn State’s first female faculty member in science or engineering — helped put Penn State chemical engineering on the map,” Peeples said. “The department’s impact has only expanded with every new generation of graduates who have helped to shape the discipline and society in extraordinary ways.”
Fenske Laboratory, which served as the department’s home base from the 1960s until 2016, was named after Merrell Fenske, department head from 1959-69, whose namesake equation determined the number of stages needed in distillation.
Fenske arrived at Penn State in 1929 to direct the Petroleum Refining Lab, which merged into the chemical engineering department in 1959. The Petroleum Refining Lab employed chemical engineers and chemists who established the technologies used for producing aviation fuels, hydraulic fluids and lubricants essential to the Allied war effort during World War II.
In 2019, the department opened its 109,000-square foot Chemical and Biomedical Engineering Building on the site of Fenske Lab. The $144 million building features open floor-plan research laboratories with transparent glass walls, a collaborative student commons space and an auditorium that holds 150 people.
“Penn State chemical engineering has made important contributions, from international leadership in oil refining and lubricant development to contributions in artificial heart design,” Janik said. “We continue to be one of the most highly funded chemical engineering departments in the nation, with metrics-based rankings continuously putting us as one of the most impactful chemical engineering research programs in the world. It is this legacy that we hope to continue to leverage in the next century.”
For more information on the department’s history and centennial celebration events, visit the centennial website and follow the department on Facebook.