Any student completing the prerequisite courses at Augustana and recommended by the faculty to the cooperating university engineering school is automatically accepted without formal application being necessary. Most chemical engineering graduates go directly into industry where they work on development, design and operations of systems which involve chemical or biochemical reactions, and the transfer of heat and mass from one location to another. An advantage of the chemical engineering program is the combination of the breadth of educational experiences afforded by a liberal arts college with a highly focused curriculum of chemical engineering. This prepares the graduate not only for the technical aspects of the engineering field, but also equips the graduate with the tools necessary to cope with the communication, social and economic factors that are encountered in all walks of life. Biochemistry Biochemistry is an active interdisciplinary field with opportunities available in research and teaching in a wide variety of areas of biology, biochemistry, agricultural biochemistry, microbiology, cell biology, physiology, and pharmacology and government laboratories.
Biochemists require a firm background in chemistry, biology, math, and physics for their work.
In addition to the close relationships you'll build with the faculty, you may qualify for a laboratory assistantship. Each year, a select number of chemistry students are chosen to assist instruction and research in the labs by preparing solutions, readying the equipment and tutoring classmates. If you're looking for additional experiences outside the classroom, check out the Student Affiliate Chapter of the American Chemical Society. It's been called one of the finest equipped facilities in the country for a college its size. While the terminology may be a bit baffling at this point in time, you'll be interested in knowing that the labs are equipped with everything from ground glass equipment and single pan substitution balances to gas chromatographs, a variety of spectrophometers, electroanalytical instrumentation, a NMR spectrometer and a mass spectrometer.