Curriculum Changes

Effective in the fall 2024 semester, the Kansas Board of Regents, or KBOR, introduced new systemwide general education requirements across its 32 institutions. These new requirements are meant to make things easier for students graduating from high school as they plan for higher education, and for students to transfer schools within KBOR institutions by requiring consistent options in general education.

The required courses include six hours of English, three hours of communication, three hours of math, four to five hours of natural and physical science, six hours of arts and humanities, six hours of social and behavioral sciences, and six hours of institutional elective — all at the 100 and 200 level. At K-State, these requirements are known as the Kansas State University Core and have replaced the K-State 8 general education requirements. There is significant overlap between the two general education requirements, however, some of the new courses (e.g. ENGL 200, Expository Writing is now required) meant shifts in the curriculum and necessary loss of hours (e.g. ENGL 415 Technical Writing is no longer required) were unavoidable.

In the Tim Taylor Department of Chemical Engineering, here’s what has stayed the same—128 hours are still required for a degree including: 16 hours of math, 10 hours of physics, 15 hours of chemistry, a semester of physical chemistry, an advanced lab, an advanced science course, an engineering topics course and a chemical engineering elective. The department has increased the hours requirement in materials which now allows students to take either biomaterials or the entire chemical engineering materials sequence instead of only two of the three.

Making up the rest of the hours in the curriculum are 41 hours of chemical engineering courses and two hours of general engineering courses. The two general engineering courses are part of the college’s common first semester, which the department participated in for the first time in 2022. These courses include an orientation course and an engineering problem-solving course.

Most chemical engineering freshmen take the problem-solving course with a chemical engineering faculty member, but all sections are open to all engineering majors. The department also moved Separational Process Design from the fall senior year to the spring of the junior year so students would have additional unit operations academic experience prior to potential internships taking place immediately before their senior year.

Current required chemical engineering courses include: Chemical Process Analysis (CHE 320), Computational Techniques in Chemical Engineering (CHE 416), Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics I (CHE 520), Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics II (CHE 521), Transport Phenomena I (CHE 530), Transport Phenomena II (CHE 531), Transport Phenomena Laboratory (CHE 535), Chemical Reaction Engineering (CHE 550), Separational Process Design (CHE 560), Health and Safety in Chemical Engineering (CHE 565), Chemical Engineering Systems Design I (CHE 570), Unit Operations Laboratory (CHE 542), Chemical Process Dynamics and Control (CHE 561) and Chemical Engineering Systems Design II (CHE 571).