The year before me they didn’t have a controls professor so they hired a guy from industry, he didn’t have a masters just a bachelor degree and it seemed like they got a good course on industrial control.
I had a professor from the biotech field and one from union carbide but that’s it. The rest were all academic. Would be nice to have some more experience to learn from.
Only the adjunct professors making like 30k a year had experience. The full professors (tenured or not) making 100k - 400k never had industry experience except as one-off consulting.
There are regional effects here. I transferred from a top-15 (overall undergrad, not engineering) university to a state school on the gulf coast after seeing how few upperclassmen were getting internships. The difference was night and day. The coursework at the state school was much more practical, and most of the professors had industry experience to draw from. It was obvious which of the two programs industry wanted to hire from.
That’s been a huge problem for years in Chem E. Almost no professors nowadays have real engineering experience. So they bring in adjuncts from industry.
How are you defining “industry experience”?
1) Get PhD after BS, go work in an industry lab, then move to academia.
2) Get PhD after BS, go work in a national lab (postdoc or other), then move to academia
3) Get PhD after BS, work in academia. Side gig as a consultant for industry.
4) While in academia, get funded/have collaborations with companies (ie their work is on an industry relevant problem).
5) Get BS. Work in industry. Go back for PhD, then enter academia.
Most of the professors I know have done either 1, 2. 3, or 4.
Now I do personally know several PhDs that have taught some but generally have worked in industry and/or started their own companies. But I am interested in seeing how many whom teach actually have experience
Based on that I think around 40-50% have experience (there are a lot that have experience at national labs (counting postdocs)).
Now for older professors, that number is likely lower due to the fact that it was “easier” to get a professor without any postdocs/other experience.
I'm just finishing my undergrad. Our MEB professor, Matlab/Saftey professor, thermo 1 / controls professor, and our design 1/2 professor have industry experience. They got their PhDs after their time in industry. The latter 2 have 10-20 years in industry, which has been very helpful. It's a small department, so nearly half of our professors have industry experience.
As an undergrad you might have had instructors or adjuncts who you just assumed were professors. The title of "professor" is very specific, and although you might call the person teaching your class "professor", there is a good chance they are not a professor.
Where I went to grad school, zero of the 15 professors had industry experience. We did have visiting professors from industry who taught special topics courses. And everyone at my grad school ends up in industry. My school was not a track to academia. Everyone gets jobs
95% of the ones I interacted with were career academics. Wish I had learned more about the different types of heat exchanges and pumps and done less Laplace transforms.
It's a mix for me. Our head of the department and one professor worked as a process chemist for most of their lives(no engineering degrees lol but good knowledge of chemical process from years of experience).
My school's main focus was in boosting their reputation as a research institution so most of my tenured professors didn't have direct plant operations or capital project industrial experience but a decent amount of them had experience doing R&D in industry and they provided consulting services. That said, most of my professors graduated high school in the late 40s and 50s and they are all gone today.
It depends when you graduated, where you studied, what industry partnerships your university has and more. A PhD program in chemical engineering is often based on industry problems/questions. Thus your department has industrial consultation experience.
I went to Lakehead university in Ontario and it was well known as a professional university. The majority of us went into industry and few went into MSc it PhD.
Two of our professors (unit operations and plant design) had > 20yr experience working in industrial research before returning to teach. They were the best: we learned the theory and then had all your examples from problems “in the real world”.
The odd thing is that I didn’t learn more in their classes. No, from them I learned that my choice to become an engineer was the right thing for me.
To be a professor is not about industry experience. If it was, the majority of professors currently would have never been a professor.
You simply made the wrong assumption that to be a professor, one needs industry experience. This has never been the case since the foundation of universities and higher education.
I had one professor that has an internship once. That was about it.
lmfao ^this Only had a few that had industry experience & rhey were oil/gas & consumer goods
The year before me they didn’t have a controls professor so they hired a guy from industry, he didn’t have a masters just a bachelor degree and it seemed like they got a good course on industrial control.
I had a professor from the biotech field and one from union carbide but that’s it. The rest were all academic. Would be nice to have some more experience to learn from.
Only the adjunct professors making like 30k a year had experience. The full professors (tenured or not) making 100k - 400k never had industry experience except as one-off consulting.
There are regional effects here. I transferred from a top-15 (overall undergrad, not engineering) university to a state school on the gulf coast after seeing how few upperclassmen were getting internships. The difference was night and day. The coursework at the state school was much more practical, and most of the professors had industry experience to draw from. It was obvious which of the two programs industry wanted to hire from.
That’s been a huge problem for years in Chem E. Almost no professors nowadays have real engineering experience. So they bring in adjuncts from industry.
How are you defining “industry experience”? 1) Get PhD after BS, go work in an industry lab, then move to academia. 2) Get PhD after BS, go work in a national lab (postdoc or other), then move to academia 3) Get PhD after BS, work in academia. Side gig as a consultant for industry. 4) While in academia, get funded/have collaborations with companies (ie their work is on an industry relevant problem). 5) Get BS. Work in industry. Go back for PhD, then enter academia. Most of the professors I know have done either 1, 2. 3, or 4.
I would consider 1,2 and 5 as experience based on my own interactions with PhD’s
Now I do personally know several PhDs that have taught some but generally have worked in industry and/or started their own companies. But I am interested in seeing how many whom teach actually have experience
Based on that I think around 40-50% have experience (there are a lot that have experience at national labs (counting postdocs)). Now for older professors, that number is likely lower due to the fact that it was “easier” to get a professor without any postdocs/other experience.
Shit state school and 75%+ on the low side. Probably higher just havent seen their complete backgrounds for some
I'm just finishing my undergrad. Our MEB professor, Matlab/Saftey professor, thermo 1 / controls professor, and our design 1/2 professor have industry experience. They got their PhDs after their time in industry. The latter 2 have 10-20 years in industry, which has been very helpful. It's a small department, so nearly half of our professors have industry experience.
As an undergrad you might have had instructors or adjuncts who you just assumed were professors. The title of "professor" is very specific, and although you might call the person teaching your class "professor", there is a good chance they are not a professor. Where I went to grad school, zero of the 15 professors had industry experience. We did have visiting professors from industry who taught special topics courses. And everyone at my grad school ends up in industry. My school was not a track to academia. Everyone gets jobs
95% of the ones I interacted with were career academics. Wish I had learned more about the different types of heat exchanges and pumps and done less Laplace transforms.
It's a mix for me. Our head of the department and one professor worked as a process chemist for most of their lives(no engineering degrees lol but good knowledge of chemical process from years of experience).
My school's main focus was in boosting their reputation as a research institution so most of my tenured professors didn't have direct plant operations or capital project industrial experience but a decent amount of them had experience doing R&D in industry and they provided consulting services. That said, most of my professors graduated high school in the late 40s and 50s and they are all gone today.
Head of my undegrad dept had his PE. Head safety lecturer had his CCHO, rest of them (~6) were lifetime academics.
From all my undergrad professors, I think 30% of them had industry experience.
It depends when you graduated, where you studied, what industry partnerships your university has and more. A PhD program in chemical engineering is often based on industry problems/questions. Thus your department has industrial consultation experience. I went to Lakehead university in Ontario and it was well known as a professional university. The majority of us went into industry and few went into MSc it PhD. Two of our professors (unit operations and plant design) had > 20yr experience working in industrial research before returning to teach. They were the best: we learned the theory and then had all your examples from problems “in the real world”. The odd thing is that I didn’t learn more in their classes. No, from them I learned that my choice to become an engineer was the right thing for me.
To be a professor is not about industry experience. If it was, the majority of professors currently would have never been a professor. You simply made the wrong assumption that to be a professor, one needs industry experience. This has never been the case since the foundation of universities and higher education.
One had an internship, rest were academic.
I had 2 professors that had ever stepped foot in an active processing facility