A New Home for Chemical Engineering
and the Opportunity of a Generation!

New Building Perspective View large picture

Chemical Engineering has been a proud and progressive component of the College of Engineering at LSU since its establishment in 1908. Prior to 1908, it was affiliated with the Department of Chemistry and the Audubon Sugar School. Its groundbreaking doctoral program, not only the first formulated at LSU but also Louisiana’s first of any discipline, awarded the state’s first PhD in 1935.

The first Chemical Engineering building was built in 1938 and housed the department until 1971. At that time, an adjacent research building was completed, under the direction of Jesse Coates and Paul Murrill, with assistance from the National Science Foundation.

Today, nearly one hundred years since the program’s inception, both buildings are outdated. Tremendous advances in science and technology have produced countless new and exciting opportunities in an industry where discovery and invention continually seed developments vital to mankind’s future. To excel competitively in this new environment, the department must rise to meet the challenges of current research and training as well as acquire the state-of-the-art technology required to lead. At the threshold of its centennial year in 2008, Chemical Engineering at LSU stands at the doorway to the future and the opportunity of a generation.

LSU’s Capital Campaign, FOREVER LSU, aims to raise the profile of an already great institution to equal and surpass peer institutions nationally and internationally. In its new projected home, the department will triple its physical space in keeping with first-class facilities of the University of Mississippi, Auburn, Texas A&M, Georgia Tech, and the University of Arkansas. The new building will also ensure that Chemical Engineering at LSU attracts and recruits the best and brightest students, postgraduates, and new faculty.

While expanding its facilities, Chemical Engineering will also strengthen its capacity through investing in its human resources to reach these goals by 2010: increasing full-time faculty members to 22; raising standards for publishing and presenting research; and increasing the research dollars per faculty member to $200,000. As part of the 1999 Cain Foundation $10 million gift endowment, the Department will also recruit four new Cain Chair holders to include among the 22 full-time faculty in its new home.

The location for the new building will be on South Stadium Drive. It will sit in front of Patrick F. Taylor Hall (formerly CEBA). It will be nearly 100,000 square-feet with approximately 60,000 square-feet of net usable space.

The location of the proposed building on South Stadium Drive. View large picture

• 4,200 Square-Foot Process Control Laboratory
  will allow undergraduate students to monitor simultaneous experiments and gain hands-on experience with cutting-edge technology in a real-world plant setting.
  
  
• State-of-the-art Research Laboratories
  will specialize in traditional disciplines as well as in emerging fields like biotechnology, nanotechnology, and development of alternative fuels and chemical feedstocks.
  
  
• More, Larger Laboratories, along with New Offices
  will better accommodate graduate and post-graduate students, faculty, and staff.
  
  
• Modern Utilities and Facilities
  will be configured both to safely and effectively manage the electrical, information, materials/chemical processing, and storage needs of the department today as well as to expand to meet the department’s needs for tomorrow.

ANSWER THE CALL

Learn more about the fund-raising efforts and how to contribute.

This page was last modified on November 10, 2007.