Chemical Engineering Professors from LSU - An Essay of a Peculiar Event

by L.J. Thibodeaux, Baton Rouge, June 10, 2008

Besides producing students with a Doctor of Philosophy (i.e., PhD) degree for employment in industry, government and laboratories elsewhere as engineering-science researchers now named Cain Department of Chemical Engineering Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge has provided professors for academic roles since 1935. Of the 234 PhDs produced over the 73 year time period 57 have served or are serving on university faculties nationwide and internationally. A steady influx of qualified and uniquely motivated individuals is needed who like to work with students doing teaching, directing their research and mentoring them to sustain the chemical engineering profession. The objective of this essay is to highlight the contribution by the LSU Department to the profession on the 100 Anniversary of Chemical Engineering. All university bound PhDs are included but the essay will focus on a sub-group of 27 who become professors in the brief ten year time period in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Besides describing the peculiar "swarm" event some insight will be offered as to why it occurred and the likelihood it may happen again.

• Introduction
• Some History
• Why did it Happen?
• Some Individual Stories
• Some Common Threads or just "Swarm" Behavior?
• Closure and Acknowledgments
• Figure 1. PhDs Entering Academia by academic year
• Figure 2. LSU ChE PhD Academia Swarm
• Table 1. List if Individuals in the LSU ChE Academic Career Group
• Table 2. LSU ChE Ph.D. Graduates with Teaching Positions