Conference: 2025 Southeast Region Chemical Engineering Chairs Meeting

The Southeast Region Chemical Engineering Chairs’ meeting is an annual conference held by department heads and chairs of Chemical Engineering in the area nominally bordered by Texas in the west up to the Ohio River in the north. This is an important meeting that aims to promote collaboration and innovation by sharing best practices and research advancements, enhance equity and inclusion within departments, and align educational programs with industry needs. In prior years, topics discussed included modernization of chemical engineering curriculum, machine learning and artificial intelligence in the chemical engineering field, mentoring of junior faculty, among many others. Additionally, the meeting aims to support faculty development through workshops and mentoring, and advance research by identifying funding opportunities for projects that address global challenges. As such, this meeting has the greatest impact when as many department chairs from the southeast region can participate. However, due to financial barriers, the attendance of minority serving institutions has been limited. The goal of the next conference is on facilitating interactions with minority serving institutions to support minority students in chemical engineering through joint programs, research collaborations, and exchange opportunities. A travel grant will be used entirely to support department chairs or program leaders from minority serving institutions, who otherwise may not have the financial resources, to attend the meeting. Personalized invitations will be sent to potential speakers and attendees, describing the conference, stating the benefits of attending, and informing them of the availability of travel grants to cover transportation, accommodation, and meals. After the meeting, data will be collected on the participant demographics, and attendee feedback. This data will be evaluated for the effectiveness of the recruitment and support strategies, assessing the impact of the travel grants towards broadening participation. Using this information, we will provide recommendations on how to improve recruitment and participation for future events. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.