Nestled between the Los Altos Foothills and the San Francisco Bay, Stanford University was founded only slightly more than a century ago. Stanford University is seen as a catalyst and partner of the regional economic growth in the Bay Area. Many faculty members have spun-off companies on the heels of their research, particularly in microelectronics, materials science, biotechnology and software engineering. The major effect has been from the graduates of Stanford University. Both principals of Hewlett-Packard (former students) have endowed chairs; they have built a state of the art engineering center (Terman) in the 80’s and continue with buildings and research support..

The Chemical Engineering Department was founded in the 50’s. The founder, Professor David Mason, established particularly strong ties with the Chemistry Department and laid down a broad strategy for research into processes and mechanisms at the molecular level. This strategic view has been carried on to the present day, with little or no research into bulk commodity chemicals production, and a strong emphasis on speciality chemical, biochemical, and materials creation, and a focus on the structure and properties of complex molecular structures. The intention is not for chemical engineers to mimic biochemists, molecular biologists, physical chemists, or material scientists, but rather to bring the traditional quantitative and problem based approach of chemical engineers to a multidisciplinary research programme. The Department hosts an NSF Center on polymeric materials at interfaces, which has generated collaborative efforts.

Stanford University has a beautiful campus and a world-renowned faculty. The Chemical Engineering Department builds on these strengths in an obvious way. Due to the University’s fine reputation, it attracts high quality junior faculty and research students.

The Department manages research careers in an enterprise fashion—investing heavily early in the assistant professor’s career in equipment, training, and resources. It expects to see dividends appearing at the point of tenure in terms of a recognized excellent research programme. Once the quality of the tenured young faculty member has been vetted, it uses peer pressure in terms of a consensus management style to promote continued high achievement. But further, by creating a pleasant and intimate environment for research, it manages the expectations of both faculty and research students, resulting in first rate and innovative results, thus enhancing the reputation of the Department. This "virtuous circle" attracts new high quality research students and faculty, but also re-energizes the veteran faculty. Further, the reputation of the Department in selecting high quality junior faculty and investing in them is noticed by external funding bodies as well, who take similar risks as the Department has already taken. Presidential Young Investigator awards and the CAREER awards, Packard Foundation Fellowships, Dreyfus Fellowships, and Beckman Foundation Fellowships have all been awarded to the younger faculty members to support unspecified innovative research programmes. Not surprisingly, the Department boasts several AIChE Colburn award winners, recognizing top achievement in young investigators.

The Department Chairman is nominally the manager of the Department. The post is for three years, extendible for a second three year term. One past holder, however, referred to himself as the "Department go-fer" in that it was a set of administrative chores largely dealing with representing the Department at the School and University levels. It required more time tied geographically to the Department, has certain powers and privileges, but as the Department made decisions democratically during staff meetings, most of those powers pertain to the execution of policy. The Department has a chief administrator and several administrative and secretarial staff members. There are no technicians.

The Department sponsors a distinguished lecture series – The Mason Lectures. It also organizes a weekly colloquium on chemical engineering science, with external experts in the three core areas of expertise invited to speak.

The Department invites all prospective graduate students to whom an offer of admission has been made to a symposium highlighting current research and planned new directions in spring, which is an opportunity both to attract top quality research associates and to exchange intramurally research developments. The qualifying examination is also an opportunity for intramural exchange of research ideas.

Graduate student stipends are usually in line with the NSF graduate fellow scheme, sometimes topped up to recognize the greater local cost of living to the national average.

The teaching load is light in terms of numbers and contact hours. The Department provides typically two core modules and one or two electives for the juniors, seniors, and Master’s levels per quarter. Thus a typical teaching load is to teach in two of the three quarters, usually one undergraduate and one postgraduate module are taught in the entire year. These ten week modules usually have three staff lecture hours per week. Thus faculty members have the time to devote to their research programmes. Students at all levels are expected to devise minor concentrations in other Departments to fill out their credit hours. There are especially strong links to chemistry historically, and recent joint and courtesy appointments have strengthened links to materials science and electrical engineering.

Graduate students are recruited by the Department on a general admission basis. The first three quarters are devoted mainly to taught course modules, for which an M Sc degree can be awarded. The decision to join a research group comes during the Winter quarter. Students must pass a pre-qualifying exercise in the Spring quarter, and a qualifying oral examination after undertaking a summer’s research. Once admitted to candidacy, the student selects a thesis reading committee from three to five members of the faculty, one of whom is external to the Department, who have agreed to serve. The committee is convened every 6-12 months for a presentation of the progress and future research plans, and to review reports of the research work.

A graduate student meets at least weekly with his advisor formally, and perhaps several times informally. Some faculty members have a "hands on" approach and can be found working in the lab side-by-side their students. Others have an open door policy for their graduate students. With such small undergraduate (cohorts from 5-15 students) and graduate numbers (6-15 per cohort), there is an intimacy in the Department that is a major attraction for top prospective graduate students. The Department attracts A-average graduate students who generally have a Chemical Engineering B Sc degree. Research groups generally meet weekly, with one of the team members presenting a progress report or an informal seminar by a visiting academic.

A graduate student is expected to finish a thesis on average in between four and a half to five years after joining the Department. Most funding of research from external sources is for three year programmes. Funding for the other one to two years comes from endowed scholarships and teaching assistantships. Graduate students are expected to serve as a teaching assistant for two quarters regardless of the source of their funding. Presumably the Department keeps a teaching assistantship fund to arrange to support students during those quarters that are not funded by other sources.

Graduate students used to be guaranteed on campus housing in the first year, however, the high cost of off-campus housing puts pressure on internal housing places and the University has expanded graduate student housing construction and rents large blocks of apartments in the community to try to deal with need.

The Department has had ten core faculty members for about twenty years. Recently it has decided to expand by at least three. The Department has three traditional general research areas—catalysis and surface chemistry, biotechnology, and complex materials and fluids. Although the Department claims to hire the best faculty candidates available, the strategic fit must be an issue as the best candidate tends to fall within the Department’s traditional general research areas. The most recent appointments reflect a strengthening of the Biotechnology effort.

Assistant Professors are appointed with the intention that they one day will become leaders of their fields. In fact, the tenure process requires it. As one former Department Chairman confided, "It would be massively unfair to put such a burden on young faculty without providing the means to accomplish it." New faculty are given start-up packages varying from $250k-$500k in cash and in kind, negotiated during the hiring process to ensure sufficient equipment to start the initial ground-breaking work, and to fund research associates, along with a substantial cash reserve. There are also various schemes to defray housing costs, as Palo Alto and vicinity are among the priciest zip codes in the US. As the recent Nobel prize winner in Physics remarked, £500k does not go very far around here.

New faculty are assigned a senior faculty member to serve as a mentor, and have periodic advice sessions to discuss how their research programmes are progressing. An annual appraisal with the Chairman, and a third year re-appointment review also provide feedback and assessment. External opinions at the third year review are usually not sought, unless there is some special concern. Internal letters are solicited normally at this stage.

New faculty are reviewed for tenure at the sixth year, and are expected to have achieved significant results such that the external view is that they are at or near the top of their peer group in their chosen subfield, with no uniform consensus that a rival is better. That this high standard has not been achieved but once in over a decade is a tribute to the ability of the Department to attract and keep superior researchers by providing an excellent support for research.

Recent appointees have been encouraged to take at least a one year post-doc prior to taking up the post, delaying the start of the tenure clock and providing an opportunity to broaden their research base. Later in their career faculty religiously take sabbaticals, usually abroad, and on a more frequent basis than in the UK. It is viewed as an important period for re-tooling and consolidating the researchers skills.

Most professors when asked how they divide their time between research, administration, and teaching felt this fell into thirds. However, when asked what was included in the "administration" time, they considered "meeting with graduate students, writing grant proposals, writing research reports to sponsors, and writing research articles for publication." The third for research was actually spent investigating their own ideas.

With the notable exception of the NSF Center, research in the Department is conducted through research groups of individual members of the faculty. The typical size of a research group is about six, reflecting the desire for each professor to take on a new research student annually. There are a handful of post-docs and visiting scholars in the Department attached to research groups at any given time, but the focus of research is through graduate students. A typical research group would have three or four active research grants.

The NSF Center was only discussed briefly, with one faculty member viewing it as an excellent resource for "Blue Sky" funding, collaboration building, and migrating to new areas.

Professors spend four to five weeks travelling in a given year, to conferences, to panel meetings, and to work with collaborators.

There is an industrial liaison committee, with member companies making donations to the Department. This source of funding has been in decline for some time, reflecting the changing face of the chemical industry. Support tends to come from industry with greater focus to specific research groups. Many projects are bootstrapped from unrestricted gifts of $25-30k to the research groups from industry.

At least two members of staff have strong associations with spin-off companies developing their technological innovations. Others use consultancy with industry along with placement of graduates as a way of maintaining industrial relevance.

As a final point, one past Department Chairman told about fund raising to provide a start-up package of $500k for a new assistant professor requiring expensive equipment for nanotechnology research. It took him an afternoon and several telephone calls to get much of the equipment donated in kind. Apparently when the University agrees the appointment, the requirements fall in thirds upon the Department Chairman, the Dean of the School of Engineering, and the University to find the package in cash or in kind. So it is a race between the Chairman and the Dean to get industrial donations of equipment to decrease the cash burden. That the Department Chairman can find such faith in the reputation of the Department among industrialists speaks volumes for the health of its innovative culture. It also demonstrates that to support innovative research properly, there is no legal contract involved, but something rather stronger -- a bond based on trust.

Bud Homsy, Channing Robertson, Gerry Fuller, Jim Swartz, Eric Shaqfeh, Charles Musgrave, Stacey Bent