On the first day of class each semester, Jennifer Schaefer tells her students that she chose chemical engineering because our everyday lives are shaped by the existence of plastics.
She wanted a field with tentacles stretching everywhere—from food and pharmaceuticals to consumer products and energy. Her new course, co-taught with a colleague and aimed at non-engineering students, is called The Story of Stuff. It traces the life cycle of everyday things from the raw materials used in production to how they are made to what happens after we are done with them. The focus is on impact.
“I like working one-on-one with students and small groups of students and offering them the experience that I got as a student, because research is not for everybody, but you don’t know until you try something if it’s for you.”
Jennifer Schaefer