<p>$2.3 million in relatively unrestricted money for each dept is really quite a bit. You could fund around 10 asst profs for that money and fund 30 PhD students with $35K each for research projects. Buildings are easy. Everyone is building them. uW has spent $2 Billion and has another $Billion in the pipeline with limited state money. Funding faculty and operations much tougher.</p>
<p>^^ Sounds Good, barrons!! Thanks for the insight!! :)</p>
<p>Actually I recall Dow Chemical used to give money to TOSU from time to time, but don’t know what happen this time?! Maybe because Ohio sued Dow for environment pollution back in 2006?..</p>
<p>Quote:</p>
<p>“Previously known as Union Carbide, Dow Chemical has donated significantly to Ohio State. According to studentsforbhopal.org, Dow donated over $2 million to OSU in 2005. As of June 2005, the University Endowment Fund held 34,860 shares of Dow Chemical with an approximate market value of $1,550,000. Information about current financial ties between Ohio State and Dow Chemical was not immediately available.”</p>
<p>Source: <a href=“http://www.thelantern.com/campus/students-rally-for-justice-in-india-tragedy-1.946229[/url]”>http://www.thelantern.com/campus/students-rally-for-justice-in-india-tragedy-1.946229</a></p>
<p>P.S. The latest has Dow Chemical trying to help TOSU establish a top-notch ‘Petroleum Engineering’ program which I will explain why in another thread. This thread should be strictly for Chemical Engineering.</p>
<p>^ The Lantern should get its facts straight. Dow Chemical was not “previously known as Union Carbide.” It’s been Dow Chemical since the company’s founding in Midland, Michigan around the turn of the 20th century, under that name producing everything from elemental chlorine. bromine, and magnesium to synthetic rubber, Saran Wrap, nuclear triggers for hydrogen bombs, napalm, Agent Orange, and (through Dow-Corning, its joint venture with the glassmaker Corning) silicone sealants and breast implants. </p>
<p>Dow bought Union Carbide in 1999 in a straight stock swap that made Union Carbide a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow. That transaction occurred some 15 years after Union Carbide’s disastrous toxic release of cyanide gas in Bhopal, India. But to say that Dow was “previously known as Union Carbide” is just wrong, as is the statement in The Lantern’s story that “Dow Chemical [was] found liable for the disaster”; again, just not so, it was Union Carbide’s plant and Union Carbide’s liability (actually, Union Carbide’s Indian subsidiary, but that’s nitpicking). When the Bhopal disaster happened, Dow had no more to do with it than you or I did. Arguably Dow bought Union Carbide’s legal liability (if any) and perhaps some measure of its moral culpability along with Union Carbide’s other assets and liabilities in 1999; but it surely wasn’t Dow’s “negligence” in 1984 when the Bhopal disaster happened at a competitors plant, as The Lantern says. That’s just incredibly sloppy reporting and egregiously bad editorial fact-checking. Shame on The Lantern.</p>
<p>
But the main point isn’t how much money over how many years. It is this: those 11 programs are what Dow considers the chemistry and/or chemical engineering programs.</p>
<p>California Institute of Technology
Carnegie Mellon
Georgia Institute of Technology
Northwestern
Pennsylvania State
University of California’s Berkeley and Santa Barbara campuses
Universities of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.</p>
<p>^^ Cool. But what happened to MIT, Stanford, Princeton, Texas…, etc.</p>
<p>[Best</a> Chemical Engineering Programs | Top Engineering Schools | US News Best Graduate Schools](<a href=“http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering-schools/chemical-engineering-rankings]Best”>http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering-schools/chemical-engineering-rankings)</p>
<p>P.S. Not that I believe TOSU should be one of the 11 since TOSU’s rankings are between #15~25 for most majors, and that is why the school is currently deemed as ‘Up-and-Coming’ (still room to excel according to Gee’s vision).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That is ludicrous. It has nothing to do with program quality and everything to do with need especially in times of tight university budgets. The majority of awards are for public universities. Clearly Dow considered MIT, Stanford, Princeton and several other top universities wealthy enough not to need their help for this program. MIT created the discipline back in 1890 and still maintains the largest ChemE program in the country which has been the top ranked program every year since the first rankings were ever issued 22 years ago. It also maintains several joint programs with Dow in particular to improve access to ChemE to minorities.</p>
<p>*all honesty, $250 million for 11 schools over a decade means roughly $2.3 million a year per school… *</p>
<p>Yes, but it sounds (to me) that some of that money will be used to underwrite endowed chairs for highly desirable profs. If so, that will help those schools attract (and pay for!) some profs that require salaries beyond what the schools would normally pay. If so, schools need those funds, otherwise it’s hard to keep top profs when just paying standard prof rates. </p>
<p>And, heck, since when would a dept scoff at receiving an extra couple of million a year? (Of course, that could mean that the university will then adjust its budget accordingly 
)</p>
<p>
That’s interesting. I don’t remember MIT being the #1 ChE program since the beginning of time. I graduated from Wisconsin almost 40 years ago. We were the #1 ChE program at the time. The top three were, in order, Wisconsin-Minnesota-UCB. Then Minnesota became #1 and remained #1 for years. Princeton was also ranked #1 for a year or two.</p>
<p>Btw, according to the previous NRC ranking, Minnesota has the #1 program followed by MIT, UCB, Wisconsin and Illinois.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>$2.3 mill is enough to endow a nice research chair. Do that 10 years in a row and it’s transformative–though I’m sure they’ll spend some of the money on other things.</p>
<p>And I’m not sure all the budget adjustments will involve redistribution away from these programs. The English department would like to see that, no doubt, but spread it around too much and you dilute the impact. Smart university administrators know it’s often a sounder strategy to build on existing strengths, so if ChemE is doing well and getting outside recognition and bringing in major gifts, the impulse may be to build it up even more by co-investing university resources in it. Having a standout program in a field where graduates are pretty much guaranteed of getting attractive, well paying jobs and leading industry players are saying, “Give us more of what you’ve got, and we’re willing to help pay for it” is a feather in any university’s cap, especially in this economy. The president and provost would need to be knuckleheads to then say, 'Well, that’s nice, but since you got that gift we’re going to tax it all away by cutting some other part of your budget." A school that’s run like that is on the fast track to mediocrity.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And the current NRC ranking of ChemE programs has MIT #5, after Caltech, UC-Berkeley, UC-Santa Barbara, and Texas. </p>
<p>Minnesota, Princeton, Stanford, Michigan, and Illinois round out the top 10, with Wisconsin and Northwestern just outside the top 10. MIT has got a great program, no doubt, but at least in the eyes of the academics who fill out the NRC surveys, it’s not head-and-shoulders above the rest. There’s some real competition there.</p>
<p>Actually, in the most recent NRC rankings MIT is #1 in the R ranking and #3 in the S ranking.</p>
<p>22 years in a row as #1 in ChemE on USNWR. </p>
<p>It has by far the most members (faculty and alumni) inducted in the National Academy of Engineering (20 of total of 100 ChemE) as well as current NAE members (7), and inductees in the National Academy of Sciences (9).</p>
<p>Nearly 25% of the recipients of major awards presented by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the American Chemical Society’s Murphree Award have been alumni or faculty of MIT.</p>
<p>More than 10% of the nation’s teachers of chemical engineering earned one or more degrees from MIT.</p>
<p>No other university even comes close.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, I don’t think that’s right. I think you’re misinterpreting the data. The R ranking and the S ranking are both expressed as 5th and 95th percentile intervals. MIT’s scores are:</p>
<p>R-ranking: 5th percentile #1, 95th percentile #4
S-ranking: 5th percentile #3, 95th percentile #8</p>
<p>As I understand it, this means the top 5% of respondents ranked MIT #1 or higher (higher obviously impossible here), and 95% ranked MIT no lower than #4 on the R-ranking. On the S-ranking, the top 5% ranked MIT #3 or higher, while 95% ranked them no lower than #8.</p>
<p>Great scores; this means they’re virtually universally viewed among people in the same field as being among the very top schools. But a few others did even better.</p>
<p>Caltech
R-ranking: 5th percentile #1, 95th percentile #6
S-ranking: 5th percentile #1, 95th percentile #2</p>
<p>UC-Berkeley
R-ranking: 5th percentile #2, 95th percentile #5
S-ranking: 5th percentile #2, 95th percentile #5</p>
<p>UC-Santa Barbara
R-ranking: 5th percentile #1, 95th percentile #6
S-ranking: 5th percentile #1, 95th percentile #4</p>
<p>Texas
R-ranking: 5th percentile #1, 95th percentile #5
S-ranking: 5th percentile #3, 95th percentile #9</p>
<p>There’s disagreement as to whether R or S is better, or whether you should use both, and if so, how to aggregate them. But I think pretty clearly Caltech’s scores in the aggregate are marginally better than MIT’s, as are UC-Santa Barbara’s. Berkeley’s are close, but arguably better; 95th percentile #5 on both rankings is remarkable. Texas’ scores seem to me not quite as good as MIT’s; not sure how the listing I was looking at ranked Texas ahead of MIT, but the other 3 have a pretty strong case.</p>
<p>Of course, at this level we’re quibbling. But in a way, that’s my point. MIT has one of a number of outstanding programs.</p>
<p>EDIT- Oh, I see what you’re doing. You’re taking the R and the S separately, and saying MIT’s R (at 1-4) is #1 in that category, and its S (at 3-8) is #3 in that category. Is that it? But even that’s not quite right. I’d have them:</p>
<p>R-ranking
- MIT (1-4)
- Texas (1-5)
- (tie) Caltech and UC Santa Barbara (1-6)
- UC Berkeley (2-5) [ or maybe a 2-5 ties a 1-6 for 3rd place]</p>
<p>S-ranking
- Caltech (1-2)
- UC-Santa Barbara (1-4)
- UC Berkeley (2-5)
- MIT (3-8)
- Texas (3-9)</p>
<p>Measured that way, MIT is #1 in the R-ranking and #4 in the S-ranking. But a 1 and a 4 is not as good as Caltech’s 3 and 1, and arguably no better than UC-Santa Barbara’s 3 and 2.</p>
<p>But as I say, these scores are so close that it’s a quibble.</p>
<p>Well… I think Dow’s list of 11 schools is probably need based. After a quick google check, I’ve just realized that TOSU has received a $17 million donation from one of its ChemE alumnus last month, and the departments have also received another $15 million in federal stimulus dollars to the National Institutes of Standards and Technology as well as the National Institutes of Health, in addition to the $150 million new chemcial and biomolecular engineering building. Also, Dow Chemical Company is currently sponsoring a two-year collaborative research project with the Ohio State Center for Resilience, combining resources from the College of Engineering.</p>
<p>[Lowrie</a> Family Donates $17 million to Ohio State Engineering | College of Engineering](<a href=“http://engineering.osu.edu/news/2009/02/lowrie-family-donates-17-million-ohio-state-engineering]Lowrie”>Lowrie Family Donates $17 million to Ohio State Engineering | COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING)</p>
<p><a href=“https://engineering.osu.edu/news/2008/12/ohio-state-secures-dow-chemical-sponsor-global-supply-chain-resilience-research-program[/url]”>https://engineering.osu.edu/news/2008/12/ohio-state-secures-dow-chemical-sponsor-global-supply-chain-resilience-research-program</a></p>
<p>Despite all that, obviously, an extra $2.27 million per year for TOSU would be nice, too! But, no luck for the school this time…XD.</p>
<p>*Originally Posted by mom2collegekids
And, heck, since when would a dept scoff at receiving an extra couple of million a year? (Of course, that could mean that the university will then adjust its budget accordingly).</p>
<p>=================</p>
<p>bclintock:
$2.3 mill is enough to endow a nice research chair. Do that 10 years in a row and it’s transformative–though I’m sure they’ll spend some of the money on other things.*</p>
<p>I hope you realize that I’m in total agreement! :)</p>
<p>Endowing chairs and using some money for other things can be very useful. I just hope any of the cash-strapped schools don’t think they can now rob the ChemE’s budget to pay other depts’ programs.</p>
<p>If any of those schools are offering ChemE REU’s in the summer (funded by NSF), that could benefit students from all over who get accepted.</p>