AIChE Honors MSU Chemical Engineering Professor For Education Efforts

A Montana State University chemical engineering professor wins a pair of national awards for her work to develop innovative approaches for instructing her students and preparing them for their careers. Stephanie Wettstein, associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering in MSU’s Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering, receives the Education and Outreach Award from the Separations Division of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. The honor comes in the wake of her winning the Society of Women Engineers’ 2022 Emerging Engineering Educator award this summer. Wettstein teaches a junior-level class about chemical engineering unit operations and a related senior-level lab course.

The award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, one of six given to faculty and industry professionals, recognizes Wettstein’s “engaging of students with novel teaching materials to improve student learning.” The award comes with a $5,000 honorarium that will support Wettstein and an MSU undergraduate assistant in developing a new set of computer applications that will allow her students to interact with images of equipment commonly used in her chemical engineering lab. The goal is to provide a more visual means of learning and offer students a way of searching out information independently, says Wettstein in a press release.

The award from the Society of Women Engineers in August honored Wettstein’s educational excellence and contributions to the engineering field and highlighted her work to transform the senior-level lab class with colleague Jennifer Brown, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering. In the new, unique course, students — with a hint of humor — pretend they are interns for a fictional company called FAVRE Corp., sharing a name with the famed former quarterback of the Green Bay Packers in Wettstein's home state, and come up with practical solutions to industrial problems.

Last summer, Wettstein received a three-year, $450,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop improved methods of making a bio-based plastic called PEF, similar to the PET plastic commonly used for food packaging. The project aims to find a better way of turning the sugars in biomass, like that left over after harvesting oil seeds of camelina, into an intermediate chemical that can then be made into PEF more efficiently and using less water. She discusses her research in class, which “really resonates with our students when they can see practical work that benefits society,” says Abbie Richards, head of the chemical and biological engineering department.

Wettstein has served as the faculty adviser for MSU’s student chapter of the Society of Women Engineers since 2013. In 2019, Wettstein won the engineering college’s Excellence in Teaching

Award for overall teaching. Last January, she also won MSU’s Teaching Innovation Award for her work to transform her senior-level lab class.

Read the press release at www.montana.edu