What Students Really Learn About Safety in Chemical Engineering Programs

In Q2 of 2025, four representatives from Fauske & Associates (FAI) attended the Purdue Process Safety & Assurance Center (P2SAC)’s Spring Conference. During the conference, Dr. Laura P. Ford of the University of Tulsa, shared results from the AIChE Survey of North American Universities Teaching Process Safety [1]. The presentation reviewed the results of a recent survey sent by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) to a multitude of universities, which gathered 95 unique responses and explored how process safety is integrated into undergraduate chemical engineering curricula.

Since Fauske & Associates is a distinctly safety-oriented engineering company, a natural question emerged: how did the education experienced by its own engineers compare to the survey findings? Given the many young engineers currently on staff at FAI, internal interviews were conducted to uncover trends and insights into the state of modern process safety education.

Study Overview

In this study, 11 engineers working at FAI were interviewed. Each of them received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering no earlier than 2014 (when the previous AIChE survey was taken). These engineers span three departments at FAI and work at various positions and levels of engineering. Table 1 below lists the universities represented by these respondents. All responses have been kept anonymous and all following results will be reported irrespective of university. 

Table 1: Universities Represented

Multiple sections of the interviews were based directly on the presentation by Dr. Ford [1], covering many of the same questions and topics. The results are broken down in the following sections.

The AIChE survey reviewed by Dr. Ford collected responses from the faculty of the responding universities on a myriad of questions, including such topics as instruction methods, resources used, and especially the level of understanding expected of some key topics within process safety.

Instruction Methods and Resources

These first few questions were intended to analyze how representative the FAI results are compared to those of the North American universities who responded to the survey. The university responses, referenced in Table 2, were sourced directly from Dr. Ford’s presentation [1].

The first topic covered was the instruction method through which process safety education was taught, with the response options being any combination of the following: throughout the curriculum, in one or more required courses, or in one or more elective courses. The interviewees were allowed to select any number of options, including zero. Table 2: Instruction Method for Process Safety.

Table 2: Instruction Method for Process Safety

¹ These percentages are approximate.

The results shown in Table 2 show a notable resemblance in the teaching methods employed by the surveyed universities and those experienced by the FAI engineers. While there is a slight lack of representation for schools with a required process safety course, there is still a meaningful relationship between the two sets of respondents.

The following question asked what instructional materials were used in their process safety education. The three standout responses are listed below in Table 3.

Table 3: Instructional Materials Used

The CSB videos used are a series of videos created by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board that discuss real-life incidents, their causes, and their impacts [2]. The third resource mentioned in this question’s responses was the Safety and Chemical Engineering Education (SAChE) courses, which are developed directly by AIChE and cover a wide swath of process safety topics [3].

For those that used textbooks in their education, every FAI engineer used Crowl & Louvar’s Chemical Process Safety: Fundamentals with Applications. This is to be expected, as at least 72% of universities with a required process safety course also use this textbook [1].

Topic Ranking

The next set of questions focused on how the FAI engineers felt about their process safety education. The AIChE survey asked each responding university to rank the level of understanding that students are meant to achieve of the nineteen categories shown in Figure 1. In this study, the FAI engineers were instead asked to rank their own level of understanding in each subject obtained solely on their college education from one of three options:

1. Excellent, meaning the topic was well-covered in their process safety education,
2. Adequate, meaning the topic was covered but not in great depth, or
3. Lacking, meaning the topic was barely covered, if at all. 

Due to the aforementioned deviation in the question that was asked, only the FAI responses are compared in Figure 1.

While many clear trends emerge from this data, a standout is the unanimous emphasis on historical incidents. Such a result, while unexpected, is certainly within reason; after all, process safety is largely shaped by the analysis of past industrial accidents. In fact, the increase in process safety education required by the ABET accreditation board has a direct link to the T2 Laboratories explosion in 2007 [1]. Another contributing factor is the prevalence of the aforementioned CSB videos, and the ease with which they contribute to the various formats of process safety education [2].

The other frontrunner in perceived excellence is Hazard Identification, although this one comes with a distinct dichotomy, as there were zero responses of “Adequate.” Many of the engineers who had a required course were unhappy with how this topic was covered, while the majority of those with process safety education integrated throughout their curriculum felt confident in it. Discussion with these engineers revealed a trend – one of the major classes that taught process safety education throughout the curriculum was the Chemical Engineering Lab course, which is especially well-suited to cover chemical hazards.

The three categories that saw consistently low levels of excellence were Right Instruments, Emergency Response, and Codes & Standards. None of these are particularly surprising; the first of these, for example, is difficult to emphasize in constrained Chemical Engineering labs and is even more challenging in a classroom setting. Codes & Standards are often overshadowed by hands-on work both in the classroom and in laboratory settings, and Emergency Response is often overshadowed by a focus on the causes of incidents instead of the response to them.

An important takeaway is that, while nearly every topic was listed as “lacking” in at least one program, 17 out of the 19 total topics were taught at least adequately in over 50% of programs - and 11 of those 17 topics reached or exceeded adequacy in over 70% of programs.

The equivalent question in the AIChE survey asked universities what level of detail they expected their students to have of each topic upon completion of their process safety education. To compare these responses, it is worthwhile to cross-reference the AIChE results for the topics already mentioned above.

For example, university respondents listed Historical Incidents as a priority no matter what teaching method they employed, with over 95% of respondents expecting their graduates to remember and understand the topic and over 50% expecting the students to analyze them in greater detail. This increases significantly when dedicated safety courses are the focus, with 80% of university respondents expecting detailed analysis.

However, not all of the university responses were quite as reflective of the FAI interviews. Right Instruments, for example, was listed by over 50% of universities as a skill they expected their students to analyze in detail. Yet, as mentioned previously, over 80% of FAI respondents consider their education on the topic to be lacking.

These differences are quite useful when analyzing the weak points of modern process safety education. Neither metric tells the full story by itself – while it is always important to note what one side thinks is lacking, the parts that need improvement are often those with this discrepancy, as students are not obtaining the level of understanding that the universities desire.

The final question was asked as follows: “Do you think your process safety education was sufficient?” The results of this question are shown below in Figure 2.

The results were surprising. A majority of the responses being “no” certainly does not bode well for the current state of process safety education. However, it is important to note that there exists a potential bias towards the higher-level concepts of process safety among the FAI engineers, given that they utilize these concepts on a day-to-day basis. It is likely that engineers in other industries may answer this question differently, even with the same process safety education.

Given this result, further discussions were held with the engineers. One key insight arose from these discussions; there is a distinct lack of consistency in what process safety topics are prioritized across different programs. Many of the shortcomings experienced by one engineer were the strengths experienced by another. The visible lack of consistency in Figure 1 supports this analysis, with the vast majority of topics receiving at least 3 votes each of Excellent and Lacking.

The interviewees were also asked to list further shortcomings beyond the stated 19 topics. Their responses spanned a wide breadth of issues - from instruction methods to lack of resources and everything in between. This breadth of feedback suggests that no single, overarching solution can address the challenges faced by all programs.

In contrast, however, multiple interviewees stated that they were aware of improvements being made to their university’s process safety education. This was most often noted by the engineers who graduated earlier, many of whom expressed that a current student would likely think better of the program than they did.

Conclusion

After interviewing nearly every applicable candidate for this survey, it becomes clear: the prevailing opinion of FAI’s process safety engineers is that there is work to be done to improve the process safety education that chemical engineering students receive. The improvements needed vary by program, and will require thoughtful attention from individual faculty and their corresponding university to implement.

With that said, there is certainly promise for the future of process safety education. Efforts to enhance existing programs are ongoing and consistent. With assistance from AIChE and ABET, and as corroborated by referencing previous survey results, the improvement of these programs is likely to continue to be priority for years to come.

References

1. Ford, L. “AIChE Survey of N American Universities Teaching Process Safety,” Purdue Process Safety and Assurance Center Spring Conference, May 6th, 2025.
2. “U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board | CSB.” U.S. Chemical Safety Board, July 27th, 2025. https://www.csb.gov.
3. “Safety and Chemical Engineering Education (Sache) Certificate Program.” AIChE, January 16th, 2025. https:// www.aiche.org/ccps/education/safety-and-chemical-engineering-education-sache-certificate-program