Bruce Finlayson
2006 Catalyst Article
This has been an active year in teaching and research, so active that I’ve decided to retire! At least part time. Winter Quarter, I taught the computer skills for chemical engineers course and decided to write a textbook describing how to use the programs Excel, Matlab, Aspen Plus, and FEMLAB to solve chemical engineering problems. The emphasis is how to solve the problems and verify that you have the correct solution to the problem you’ve posed, rather than to apply numerical methods. One Sunday I was working on it, and looked at Amazon.com. My heart dropped—there was a book listed there with the same title. Then I read more closely—it was the one I was working on right then, with an “Available Spring 2006” notation. Whew! I mailed the manuscript off to Wiley in mid-June, and that was a relief, too.
During Spring Quarter, I co-taught the senior design course with Dan Schwartz, supervised the energetic work our students did for the open house, and supervised 13 undergraduates (juniors) in various research projects (all described elsewhere). My graduate students presented papers at the AIChE meeting, the Fluid Dynamics Division of the American Physical Society, and the Metals Conference. At the APS meeting I also lead a workshop: “How will you do when the tables are turned, and you are the faculty mentor?” Both of my graduate students got their PhDs this spring/summer, but I’ll still work with three graduate students in bioengineering (in microfludics).
I will continue to teach Winter Quarter (the computer class) and have undergraduate researchers.
The end of the year was extremely busy but very rewarding. The seniors gave me an award as the Outstanding Professor, which I cherish. As I said at the ceremony, this year I’ve really had fun working with them. The next week I went to the American Society of Engineering Education meeting in Portland, where the Chemical Engineering Division awarded me the Dow Lectureship. I gave a lecture about how my research has impacted education over the last 38 years. The ASEE Chemical Engineering Division took a dinner cruise down the Willamette River where this picture was taken of Bruce (award plaque in hand) with his wife, Pat
I’m now preparing a talk for the FEMLAB Conference 2005, where I will give a plenary lecture about the use of FEMLAB in education. As just one example of what we can achieve: my junior 499 students did 3D flow simulations of a power-law fluid in complicated geometries. When I started teaching, all we could do was analytic solutions for fully developed flow in one dimension!
On a more personal note, in the summer of 2004 I earned my grandfather stripes. Both my daughter and daughter-in-law were having babies about the same time in September, so I went to one family and my wife, Pat, went to the other to help them out. I have great respect for families that are raising children! Of course, now that I have four grandchildren, that will be one of my activities during retirement.
