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

It is a topic of conversation at any meeting of two or more LSU graduates that became professors and commenced on an academic career (AC). Typical of such meetings is recalling the names and universities of this select group and their present status. Such an event occurred recently at a dinner party that included several faculty members, the ChE Chair, and the Dean of the College. Ralph Pike, Ron Rousseau, and I arrogantly hijacked the dinner conversation of all present onto this subject to the entertainment, frustration, enlightenment, and annoyance; I am sure, of the others in attendance. The AC Group is rapidly approaching its retirement stage; after the dinner I decided to write a piece about the history of this unique phenomenon while most members are still active in order to get the facts straight and tell the unique story. The phenomenon, if you haven't already figured it out, is that in a very short time-period a large group of LSU Ch.E. PhD graduates chose to became professors and entered academia rather than positions in the CPI. The group is the subject of this essay.

The phenomenon is defined above. It occurred the time period 1962-1973 and involved twenty seven graduates. However, twenty gained PhDs during 1966-71, a 6-year time-period. Table 1 contains the list of the 27 by year PhD granted. This was the real surge period, the anomaly, of PhD graduates that became professors. All 27 joined the academic ranks taking university positions in chemical engineering departments, primarily. There were also numerous others during this same time period that went to industrial positions. Although we all know the phenomenon happened I am not sure we know why it happened. According to the data in Table 2 and the bar graph in Figure 1 such a surge of graduates taking academic positions never occurred before 1966 and has not reoccurred since 1971.

Many factors enter into a decision process of choosing a career. There are several employment pathways that are traditional for entry-level PhDs. They include primarily the chemical process industries (CPI), those companies providing services to the CPI, academia, governmental agencies, and consulting. The first two attract the most graduates. The formative years for these students are the pre-graduate school time-period plus the graduate school experience. Experiences, external factors, personal goals, luck, "swarm behavior" forces and a few other things go into the final decision. Before these things are considered to arrive at the why it happened question a brief outline of the history of the times is helpful.