Letter from the Chair

Dear Friends and Alumni:

One year has passed since the catastrophic events of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita that wreaked havoc on the lives of many of our friends and alumni and their property along the Gulf Coast. We hope that all of you have recovered. We are all well aware that much more remains to be done and our recovery is slow and painful. We want to extend our support and services in whatever we can do to help during these trying times.

Since the last newsletter, we had one retirement from the faculty: Professor Douglas Harrison in fall 2005. Professor Harrison retired after 35 years of dedicated service to the department. Although retired, he still continues to be active in his research and visits the department often. We are also fortunate to have one new faculty as of Fall 2006: Dr. John Flake as an Associate Professor. Dr. Flake received his Ph.D. from Georgia Tech and has several years of industrial experience with IBM and Motorola. We are also on-line to recruit two other assistant professors in the next academic year.

The department is continuing to modernize our undergraduate laboratory under the able leadership of Professor Kerry Dooley and Dr. Harry Toups. Most of the experiments have been modernized and several new ones added. Any of our alumni or friends willing to help with this effort is welcome to get in touch with Professor Dooley.

The Departmental Industrial Advisory committee has been reconstituted and we will be meeting in November this year. Several of you have willingly provided your time and services to be on the committee and I am thankful for your services.

Most important of all are the developments regarding a new building for the department. Our new building is a very high priority for the University, and it is on the Capital Outlay plan. A new committee to be chaired by Ron Cambre will be developing plans for fund raising as part of the LSU Forever Capital Campaign. We have met with the architects who are designing the building and anyone interested in seeing the new plans can drop by the department to see the drawings. A sketch of the building can be viewed on our website. We hope that we will witness an enthusiastic response from our friends and alumni. Any contributions made out to this effort should specify "LSU Foundation: Chemical Engineering Building Fund" so that it will be appropriately credited with the LSU Foundation.

Our alumni and friends have helped us establish several professorships and chairs for the faculty, and scholarships for our students. These efforts have helped us recruit and retain excellent faculty and students to our undergraduate and graduate programs. Our undergraduate curriculum has undergone significant revisions and these can be viewed on our website.

The 3^rd alumni reunion was held in April 2006 and was attended by many of you. We would like to visit with more of you during our next annual reunion and you should be receiving our mailing soon. You may update your mailing address and other contact information with us anytime by logging onto our Web site at www.che.lsu.edu.

I wish you all the very best for the rest of 2006 and beyond. If you happen to visit Baton Rouge, please stop by the department.

Kalliat T. Valsaraj
Department Chair
Charles and Hilda Roddey Distinguished Professor and
Ike East Professor

If you would like to know mere about contributing, please contact Kalliat Valsaraj at 225/578-1426 or send an email to valasaraj@lsu.edu.

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