Purdue’s School of Chemical Engineering has recently begun offering a Professional MS degree in Chemical Engineering. This degree meets an important educational need for students that want additional education beyond the traditional BS degree, but are not interested in a research focused career associated with the PhD. The Professional MS Program meets this needs by providing students with a BS degree (i) additional technical coursework, (ii) a professional rounding with selected business courses and (iii) a summer project course.
Students with a BS degree in Chemistry can also participate in the Professional MS Program, where they will need to take a small number of additional courses that introduce important engineering principles that are not part of most BS Chemistry programs, e.g. the effect of mass transfer on chemical reactions. The Polymer Concentration in the Professional MS Program is particularly well suited for students with a BS in chemistry. Students will be able to leverage their undergraduate chemistry knowledge with a combination of basic chemical engineering principles and coursework in specific areas in polymer science and engineering. In addition, since there is a cohort of BS Chemistry students in the program, the coursework acknowledges the type of material that a chemistry major knows (and also material that they probably do not know) and BS chemistry students have a natural group with which to study.
The Polymer Concentration in the Professional MS Program have been develop by Professor Caruthers along with Professors Bryan Boudouris, Brett Savoie and You-Yeon Won. The program has a variety of polymer courses including:
• ChE 541 Introduction to Polymer Science and Engineering I
• ChE 542 Introduction to Polymer Science and Engineering II
• ChE 543 Polymer Reaction Engineering
• ChE 544 Polymer Physical Chemistry
Additional courses are under development. These courses will provide students with a strong foundation in polymer science and engineering.
Since polymers are one of the most important products of the chemical industry, knowledge of polymers in conjunction with an engineering degree should provide a significant employment advantage to graduates of the Program vs. a traditional BS in Chemistry. Students in the Professional MS Program have access to all of the Purdue employment resources.
Additional information on the Professional MS Program in Chemical Engineering including application materials can be found at https://engineering.purdue.edu/ChE/academics/graduate/masters