Undergraduate

Advisor's Message

On behalf of the faculty in Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering, I welcome you to the Department. I will serve as your primary contact regarding all matters related to your academic program. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need advice regarding various choices offered by the university.

To confer the Bachelor of science in chemical engineering degree, we must comply with accreditation requirements by the American Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET). Basic to accreditation is adherence to published academic policies.

The USF Undergraduate Catalog states 'the responsibility for seeing that all graduation requirements are met rests with the students.' However, the college and the department require that each student meet with the undergraduate advisor each term. We will work together to develop a plan of study for you and will revisit it each term to determine whether any changes need to be made.

Beyond obtaining the BS degree in chemical engineering, there are other opportunities available to you and we can talk about these in detail when we meet.

An accelerated BS/MS program is also available. There are two advantages to this program over the traditional route of obtaining a B.S. degree and then enrolling in graduate school. First, students can begin taking approved graduate courses as they complete their undergraduate degree, allowing some extra flexibility in scheduling. Second, the department can double-count six credit hours to both degrees, effectively making the MS degree consist of 24 hours, as opposed to 30.

Co-op Program - Students alternate several semesters of full-time work with semesters of full-time coursework, allowing students to gain practical experience in their field and also to earn some money. Moreover, while working you can enroll into our industry internship course (ECH 4944) and accumulate hours that can be used for technical elective credits.

If you are considering graduate school, the department encourages you to gain some research experience at the undergraduate level. This can be done through different mechanisms and the some of these mechanisms allow the experience to be counted as technical elective credit.

In closing, let me welcome you once more to the Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering program at the University of South Florida. I look forward to meeting you!

Professor Piyush Koria