Development of Learning Tools to Bridge Modern Economics with Chemical Engineering

工程-化学（53）这个化学工程和经济学院的合作项目解决了化学工程学生在进入劳动力市场时面临的重要问题（不确定性下的决策，风险管理等），这些问题在工程设计或工程经济学的课程或教科书中通常没有涉及。这些挑战包括(a)在极端不确定的条件下（由于自然灾害、国际争端、恐怖主义和脆弱的能源供应）管理和运营公司和工厂，(b)大公司转向生产具有高利润率的特种产品，而不是商品和化学品，(c)制定新的跨学科专业活动领域，如产品设计，(d)利用技术突破（如纳米技术、可再生能源）的新产品的预期开发。该项目利用现代经济学的发展，利用发达的工具，如决策理论、风险分析、预测分析、价格理论等，来应对这些挑战。与此同时，化学工程中常用的分析和模拟技术也被用于本项目，为产业组织和微观经济学的几个领域的发展提供了一个新的视角。该项目实现了四个具体目标：(a)将现代经济学技术纳入工程设计的教学；(b)将分析技术从化学工程转移到微观经济学；(c)发展说明性的课堂实验和个案研究，以展示上述内容，并可在现有及新课程中使用；(d)评估和改进课堂实验和整个项目开发的学习材料。该项目的完成对两个学科的课程产生了影响，在现有课程中纳入了新材料，并为新的跨学科课程创造了材料。此外，通过这个项目产生的学习材料正在通过一个网络服务器提供给社区。项目结果的评价正在同行机构中使用测试版进行。

Engineering-Chemical (53)This collaborative project between faculty in Chemical Engineering and Economics addresses significant issues that chemical engineering students face upon entrance into the workforce (decision making under uncertainty, managing risk etc.) which are often not covered in curricula or textbooks for engineering design or engineering economics. Such challenges include (a) the management and operation of companies and plants under conditions of extreme uncertainty (due to natural disasters, international disputes, terrorism and vulnerable energy supply), (b) the move by major corporations towards the production of specialty products with high profit margins instead of commodities and chemicals, (c) the formulation of new interdisciplinary areas of professional activity, such as product design, and (d) the expected development of new products that utilize technological breakthroughs (e.g., nanotechnology, renewable energy). The project is using modern developments in Economics to address these challenges with well developed tools, such as decision theory, risk analysis, forecasting analysis, price theory etc. At the same time, analysis and simulation techniques that are being used commonly in Chemical Engineering are being utilized in this project to provide a fresh perspective for the advancement of several areas of Industrial Organization and Microeconomics. The project is accomplishing four specific objectives: (a) integrating modern economics techniques into the teaching of Engineering Design; (b) transferring analysis techniques from Chemical Engineering to Microeconomics; (c) developing illustrative classroom experiments and case studies that showcase the above and can be used in existing and in new classes; (d) assessing and improving the classroom experiments and the learning material developed throughout the project. Completion of this project is impacting the curricula in two disciplines, with the incorporation of new material in existing classes and with the creation of material for a new interdisciplinary class. In addition, the learning material generated through this project is being made available to the community through a web server. Evaluation of the project results is being conducted in peer institutions with the use of the beta versions.