The Linus Pauling Engineer

Infusing the laboratory with corporate professionalism

There’s an experiment underway at OSU that Chemical Engineering Department Head Carol McConica believes will transform her department into the preeminent chemical engineering undergraduate program in the West—and in the process help lift OSU’s College of Engineering to Top-25 status.

This particular experiment is all about innovative teaching—and there’s nothing else like it happening in any other chemical engineering department in the United States.

“This is a really unique program that Berkeley doesn’t have, that Stanford doesn’t have, that UW doesn’t have,” McConica says. “It’s only going on here. At OSU. And we’re going to be able to sell it as one-of-a kind in the country.”

The experiment—called “CoaChEs” (Communication, organization, and analysis skills for Chemical Engineering students)—is the brainchild of OSU alumnus and businessman Pete Johnson, founder of Tekmax, who was frustrated that the engineering graduates hired by his company lacked an understanding of what it takes to work in the corporate world.

Johnson endowed the project with a $1.2 million gift that funds an unusual new faculty position, appropriately named after the department’s most famous graduate. The Linus Pauling Engineer is not a traditional academic, but an individual with extensive industry experience who literally brings corporate professionalism into the laboratory by coaching seniors—in no uncertain terms—exactly what a professional organization will be expecting of them when they enter the job market.

“This is not teaching in the traditional sense,” McConica says. “This is full-time teaching by corporate winners rather than by teaching assistants. The best thing you can compare it to is athletic coaching by a superstar. It’s giving immediate feedback during long practice sessions in small (six-student) groups. The method is very demanding and also very nurturing.”

It’s also very intensive. Coaching sessions are six hours long, every week, for two solid terms. Every experiment is managed and supervised as it would be in industry, complete with project planning and management, task assignments, team meetings, effective corporate communication, conflict resolution, checkpoints, deadlines, and all the rest. Students write 6,000 words during the first term and must rewrite every report until it is written correctly. All term long, students are individually coached on their writing and speaking skills. During the second term students write project proposals, present them to the “funding team,” and give an intermediate as well as a final project presentation.

“We are doing pure science within the context of corporate structures,” McConica says.

When finished, students are highly employable because they’ve gained the skills industry is looking for. “And it’s not just up here in the head,” McConica says. “Because the skills have been practiced and coached and practiced again. This is the best way to produce work-ready graduates.”