Development of Learning Tools to Bridge Modern Economics with Chemical Engineering

工程-化学(53)化学工程系和经济学系的合作项目解决了化学工程专业学生在进入工作岗位时面临的重大问题(不确定情况下的决策、风险管理等)。在工程设计或工程经济学的课程或教科书中往往没有涉及到这些问题。这些挑战包括：(A)公司和工厂在极端不确定条件下的管理和运营(由于自然灾害、国际争端、恐怖主义和脆弱的能源供应)；(B)大公司转向生产高利润率的特殊产品，而不是商品和化学品；(C)制定新的跨学科专业活动领域，例如产品设计；(D)预期开发利用技术突破的新产品(例如纳米技术、可再生能源)。该项目正在利用经济学的现代发展来应对这些挑战，使用成熟的工具，如决策理论、风险分析、预测分析、价格理论等。同时，该项目正在使用化学工程中常用的分析和模拟技术，为产业组织和微观经济学的几个领域的发展提供一个新的视角。该项目正在实现四个具体目标：(A)将现代经济学技术融入工程设计教学；(B)将分析技术从化学工程学转移到微观经济学；(C)开发说明性课堂实验和案例研究，展示上述内容，并可用于现有课堂和新的课堂；(D)评估和改进整个项目开发的课堂实验和学习材料。该项目的完成对两个学科的课程产生了影响，在现有课程中采用了新材料，并为新的跨学科课程编写了材料。此外，通过该项目产生的学习材料正通过网络服务器提供给社区。正在使用测试版在同行机构中对项目结果进行评估。

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.