A study at some university was made a few years ago. After the chemical engineering students took their final examination, attended their graduation ceremonies, enjoyed their farewell parties and said goodbye too each other, they headedd off in an impressive variety of geographical and career directions:

45% Of the class went to work for a large chemical, petrochemical, pulp and paper plastics and other materials, or textile manufacturing firms.

Another 35% went to work for government agencies and design and consulting firms (many specializing in environmental regulation and pollution control) and for companies in fields such as microelectronics and biotechnology that have not traditionally been associated with chemical engineering.

About 10% of the class went directly into graduate school in chemical engineering. The masters degree candidates will get advanced education in traditional chemical engineering areas (thermodynamics, chemical reactor analysis and design, fluid dynamics, mass and heat transfer, and chemical process design and control), and in about two years most of them will graduate and get jobs doing process or control systems design or product development. The doctoral degree candidates will get advanced education and work on major research projects and in four to five years most will graduate and either go into industrial research and development or join a university faculty.

The remaining 10% of the class went into graduate school in an area other than chemical engineering, such as medicine, law and business.

Several graduates went to work for companies manufacturing specialty chemicals, ­pharmaceuticals, paints and dyes, and cosmetics, among many other products. All of these companies used to hire only chemists to design and run their production processes, but in the past few decades they discovered that if they wanted to remain competitive they would have to pay attention to such things as mixing efficiency, heat transfer, automatic temperature and liquid level control, statistical quality control, and control of pollutant emissions. They also discovered that those are areas in which chemical engineers are educated and chemists are not, at which point these industries became an increasingly important job market for chemical engineers.

Some went to work for companies that manufacture integrated semiconductor circuits. A critical step in the production of (for example) computer chips involves coating small silicon wafers with extremely thin and uniform layers of silicon-containing semiconducting mate rials. The technique used for this process is chemical vapor deposition, in which the coating material is formed in a gas-phase reaction and then deposited on the surface of the wafer. The graduates working in this area may be called on to identify reactions that can be used to produce the desired films, determine the best conditions at which to run the reactions, design the reactors, and continue to improve their operation.

Some took elective courses in biochemistry and microbiology and got jobs with small but rapidly growing biotechnology firms. One graduate works on the design of pharmaceutical production processes that involve immobilized enzymes, biological chemicals that can make specific reactions go orders of magnitude faster than they would in the absence of the en zymes. Several others work on processes that involve genetic engineering, in which recom binant DNA is synthesized and/used to produce valuable proteins and other medicinal and agricultural chemicals that wmild be hard to obtain by any other means.

Some joined companies that manufacture polymers (plastics). One is working on the devel opment of membranes for desalination of seawater (fresh water passes through, salt is kept out) and for gas separations (hydrogen passes through and hydrocarbons are kept out, or vice versa); another is developing membranes to be used in hollow-tube artificial kidneys (blood flows from the patient's body through thin-walled tubes; metabolic wastes in the blood pass through the tube walls but proteins and other important body chemicals remain in the blood, and the purified blood is returned to the body).

Four of the graduates went to medical school. (Chemical engineering graduates who take several electives in the biological sciences have a strong record of success in gaining med ical school admission.) One went to law school. Three enrolled in Master of Business Ad ministration programs and after graduation will probably move into management tracks in chemical-related industries.

One graduate joined the Peace Corps for a two-year stint in East Africa helping local com munities develop sanitary waste disposal systems and also teaching science and English in a rural school. When she returns, she will complete a Ph.D. program, join a chemical engineer ing faculty, write a definitive book on environmental applications of chemical engineering principles, quickly rise through the ranks to become a full professor, resign after ten years to run for the United States Senate, win two terms, and eventually become head of a large and highly successful private foundation dedicated to improving education in economically deprived communities. She will attribute her career successes to the problem-solving skills she acquired in her undergraduate training in chemical engineering.

At various points in their careers, some of the graduates will work in chemical or biochemical or biomedical or material science laboratories doing research and development or quality engineering, at computer terminals designing processes and products and control systems, at field locations managing the construction and startup of manufacturing plants, on production floors supervising and troubleshooting and improving operations, on the road doing technical sales and service, in executive offices performing administrative functions, in government agencies responsible for environmental and occupational health and safety, in hospitals and clinics practicing medicine or biomedical engineering, in law offices specializing in chemical process related patent work, and in classroom teaching the next generation of chemical engineering students.