Minnesota is a state university and land grant college, which means it has state funding for a large agricultural science and advisory facility. All of the agricultural departments and also biological sciences together with a Bioprocess Technology Center are situated on the St Paul Campus some 6 miles distant from the Minneapolis campus which hosts chemical engineering.

The chemical engineering department is regarded by many as no 1 in the USA (and it was so rated in the most recent National Research Council survey).. A large percentage of faculty within the universities visited had obtained PhDs at Minnesota. One of the key Departments in the development of modern Chemical Engineering Science. It was built on a vision of Neal Amundson (BS ChemE, Ph.D. Math) who following a visit to Cambridge in ’54 started to build a multidisciplinary team. With degrees in microbiology, mathematics, theoretical chemistry, biomedical engineering, they all taught chemical engineering core courses whilst retaining a professional identity in their other discipline by appropriate publications. The vision of interdisciplinary collaborations continued when in the 70’s they took over one part of materials science, the other part going to mechanical engineering. They built up a joint department and now cover a wide range of materials work (solid state physics, colloid and interface science, polymers) which merges seamlessly into the chemical engineering side. No divisions were detectable. Currently members of the faculty hold Ph.D.s in 9 different disciplines.

The vision of Neal Amundson is referred to by nearly all of those interviewed as he built a department which forged the way in bringing mathematics into chemical engineering, and developing a strong theoretical foundation for the discipline. He built a department of friends where the main attraction is the collegiality and excellence together. Ted Davies (Dean of the Institute of Technology) said that they sought faculty "Who can walk on water and get along with people".

There is a programme to help Faculty to improve teaching, discuss teaching strategy, learning techniques, feedback mid-course, etc. Minnesota has a "loose teaching structure", i.e. team teaching used. A group of faculty set up a teaching plan and monitor progress. Bush Foundation for supporting faculty to attend teaching workshops. Teaching quality assessed through student evaluations, peer observations of core courses. Also junior lecturers observe main lecturers. It is compulsory for graduate students to be Teaching Assistants for one term

• I never cancel lectures always replace with a colleague.

A course for 200 students 1 hr/day may have 8 teaching assistants and 2 lab assistants for marking and demonstrating. Faculty are expected to change their core taught course ~ every 5 years. Faculty running recitation classes for a few years prior the teaching of that course achieves course continuity. No formal peer observation in Department but greatly encouraged.

The department tries to hire best person, but is sometimes influenced by needs although these are generally a secondary consideration. Conflicts between areas are decided in committee.

• "attracted to Minnesota because of "no politics""
• "attracted to Minnesota because of the dept.'s close contact with the Material Science dept."
• "entered chem eng. because of "significant opportunities for growth"; moved from gas phase photochemistry to reaction engineering, mainly due to the influence of Aris at the time (i.e. modelling input on experimental work on counter-current chromatographic reactors)"
• "-switched to chem. eng. because deemed to have the highest starting salaries and the most challenging major"
• "scope, size and mission of the department (greater potential for teaching and research)."
• "Last three to four years work with industrial development lab in advanced CEMOS. Less happy due to issues of no new faces, no graduate students, total cut back - IBM moved to hardware business and thus cut back on research."
• "intellectual satisfaction. Took a major salary cut from industry to academia (50% job), want to teach and do research."

Generally ~ $250K , $200K equipment + funds for 2 students for 2 years each

• Entered as a tenured Professor and was provided with enough resources to replicate everything he had previously in industry.

There is a 95% success rate at Minnesota.

• "It is important to achieve visibility and a reputation quickly. Travel is considered to be critical, making dept. and yourself more visible. Peers who will review research proposals need to see you. One felt it necessary to attend 3-4 conferences / year,"

Three members of faculty on Tenure committee, reviewed every year and provide honest feedback. Very good support of young Faculty to help achieve required standards.

• "Tenure is stressful. During a PhD there is time to think and one can have longer term objectives. As a new faculty member one needs to be visible early. The number of papers required to be written leads to short termism. A Post Doc position enables freedom of thought and makes it possible to postpone when to take up job so can ensure one hits the ground running."

Workloads quoted ranged from 45– 90 hrs per week. Lowest was for someone who had been doing 90 and fell ill from overwork – switched to more teaching less research. Driven by desire to succeed

• "strong collegiality in Dept., and many faculty are members of other departments"
• "we work 80 hours week and have a beer party on Friday in Department which helps promote professional interactions in an informal setting - which is also fun."

Work is fundamental but motivated by potential applications

Research strengths are: colloid and interface engineering, biomedical engineering (tissue engineering and artificial organs- they are involved in making the first artificial liver to enter clinical trials), polymers- from atomic and thermodynamic standpoint. Angle tends to mix theory and computation, and electronic materials. There is a strong focus on computational aspects. A real strength of the U of M is the super computing facilities with 3 Crays and massively parallel facilities. Time assignment is done locally on the base of a 4 page proposal.

• "I like to involve 1 UG/year on a safe research project."

They are the site of a $9.1M interdisciplinary Materials Research Centre (MRESAC) – Colloid and Interface Engineering founded by a chemical engineer and now the Head of the Materials Centre has all three degrees in chem.eng.

Research Funding - DOE, NASA, NSF, umbrella semi-conductor organisations i.e. SEMATEC, semi-conductor research corporation (SRC), semi-conductor and processing companies (Seagate is in the state).

• "NSF funding very competitive, major issue of reviewing proposals, field mismatch can occur resulting in good proposals being ditched. Essential to identify appropriate referees
• ""peer review of NSF grants keeps you motivated"

University grants available to young faculty to bridge funding gaps, and to provide summer fellowships. Grants from NSF usually one at a time to a PI. Centre grants are additional. Industrial money can be used as cash to bridge gaps between grants (a reserve is built up). They travel to industry a lot to stay in contact.

• "no barriers to collaborations, just issue of time and ability to foster collaborations."

• "Contacts with UK are rarely in Chem Eng."
• "My Competitors in UK are- UMIST, Imperial, UNEW. "
• "not too familiar with research expertise in UK "

Michael Ward, J.J. Derby, L.F. Francis, F. R.W. Carr, Frank Bates, Jim Chelikowsky, Prodromos Daoutidis, Robert Cook Ted Davis, John Dahler, Arnie Fredrickson.