In tonight's webinar, we're going to discuss a few
things that you've probably got quite a lot of questions about,
we're going to provide you a definition for what is chemical
process engineering, we're going to talk about some of the career
opportunities that exist in chemical process engineering.
We're going to talk about the structure of the chemical
process engineering degree at UTS. And we'll also talk about
the UTS applications process. And we will also hold a question
and answers or Q&A session. Okay, so in terms of the
background, chemical process engineers are experts in using
raw materials and energy and to turn them into value added
products. And those products need to be functional, safe and
sustainable. So when you sort of think about the chemical
products that we've got in society, if we're interested in
creating a safe product, we're looking at potentially, say, a
pharmaceutical or medical application, or it could be an
explosive that's been manufactured for example. If
we're talking about sustainable products, then we might be
talking about some sort of energy systems product, or
packaging product, for example. Whereas you know, functional
products will come into play for, you know, the advanced
manufacturing industry. So that's in a nutshell, what
chemical process engineers do. And at UTS study and chemical
process engineering enables students to sort of bridge two
worlds, I mean, you've got, you know, fundamental engineering
science, but you also get to apply that with emerging digital
literacy skills, like artificial intelligence, and data
engineering, and industry 4.0. So by bringing those two worlds
together, we're putting students in a position where they can,
you know, make a really strong contribution to chemical process
engineering. So I mean, in terms of, you know, working in that
sort of plant environment, this is actually an industry for test
lab, for creating algae. Algae has got a broad range of really
useful environmental and chemical applications. So this
is sort of like, a typical sort of environment that we really
anticipate that our our graduates will end up working
in. Okay, so as I was saying before, with the chemical
process engineering degree at UTS, we're really wanting to
sort of bring those two worlds together. So the fundamental
engineering science that underpins chemical process,
engineering hasn't changed. I mean, we're still after students
who really have a passion for chemistry. They're knowledgeable
about physics and they've also got expertise in biotechnology.
You know, that scientific core of chemical process engineering
is the same, but to be able to create the value added products
that society needs, we need to bridge that with the digital
world. And that's one of the strengths of our Faculty of
Engineering and Information Technology at UTS is that we've
got a lot of expertise in those digital literacy skills like
machine learning, automation, data science, industry for
advanced manufacturing. And by bringing those two worlds
together. We believe that we're offering a unique degree
experience that prepares students very well for the
future direction of the discipline. Okay, and when we do
create chemical products, there's a few examples or few
outcomes that we really like to get from those activities.
Environmental Sustainability is a really, really important one.
You think of the current chemical process engineering
industry is very largely fossil fuel based. And what we want to
inspire in our graduates is to move to more sustainable
solutions for chemical processing. So environmental
sustainability, objectives are really, really important. But at
the same time, economic considerations are important
too. So by creating these new chemical products, we want to be
able to achieve economic outcomes for various industries
as well. Okay, so this is an overview of the engineering
courses that UTS offer. So today's webinar is talking about
chemical process engineering. So that's going to be our new major
for 2023. I should also mention that we are a school of Civil
and Environmental Engineering, and we do also offer degree
programmes in civil engineering. This is the one with the blue
asterisks, so we offer a civil engineering degree with
specialisations in structures and construction. And we also
offer a degree in Civil and Environmental in Engineering,
which may be of interest in addition to chemical process
engineering as you sort of make your selections for for tertiary
education as the year progresses.
In terms of career opportunities, chemical process
engineering is a growth area. Yeah, Dr. Irga did some job
outlook analysis before tonight's webinar and, you know,
over a five year window, we are going to be seeing growth
potential in the chemical process engineering discipline.
And you can see on this slide that there's a whole range of
industries where chemical process engineering graduates
may work. A number of industries are listed, but should also
mention that in chemical engineering consulting, process
engineers or chemical process engineers are employed. Both
Peter and myself work in air quality research. And in our
professional day to day life, we do come across people with a
chemical engineering background who undertake those roles for
consultancies. There are some opportunities with state and
federal government agencies, when you think about, you know,
contaminated sites with hazardous chemicals, doing waste
remediation, and projects like that. State and federal
government agencies do get involved in that sort of work,
but should mention that it's largely the the chemical
processing industries where we anticipate that our students
will work. And, you know, bioprocessing is a good example.
So that's relying on students knowledge of biotechnology, to,
you know, deliver those sort of chemical products that we were
talking about before, like, safe and functional pharmaceuticals
and vaccines. How do we how do we do, you know, sustainable
food and beverage products, for example, the energy sector is
also a big employer as well. And as I was saying before, our
economy is largely still carbon based. And with chemical process
engineering, there's an opportunity to embrace renewable
energy technology and all of the the associated benefits with
that. So that sector is going to grow tremendously. Now that
we've got a bit more global agreement about, you know, the
urgent need to reduce CO2 emissions, you'll see that the
petrochemical industry is listed there as well. You know, people
typically think of oil and gas as products of the Petrochemical
industry. But there's a whole array of other chemical products
that are produced there. But what we're going to see playing
out is that bioprocessing will start to overtake
petrochemicals, in terms of that supply chain for the chemicals
that we need. And there's other opportunities here as well. UTS
has research expertise, in particular, in the circular
economy. There's opportunities there climate change mitigation,
climate change consulting, obviously, the mining sectors
also going to be a big growth opportunity as well, when you
start thinking about, like electric vehicles, for example,
we need to use a whole range of rare earth minerals to make
batteries or electric motors. So we're talking about elements
like lithium and nickel and cobalt and metals on the
periodic table like that. So there'll be there'll be some
really big opportunities in the mining sector to to build a
career once you've finished your degree at UTS.
Okay, one question we quite often get from students is what
is the degree structure. So this is what a Bachelor of Chemical
Process Engineering is going to look like. The thing to keep in
mind about the UTS programme here is that not only you're
doing the Bachelor of Engineering and Chemical Process
Engineering, but you're also doing a Diploma in Professional
Engineering Practice. So what that means is that this degree
experience with the Diploma in Professional Engineering
Practice is a five year experience rather than a four
year experience. And what I should mention straightaway Is
that what you see with these dark grey bits in stage four,
and stage eight of the degree, are six month internships, and
that enables students to quite often take, you know, paid work
as an engineer to get experience, you know, for your
degree programme, and that's embedded at strategic stages
within the degree. So that experience there is why we're
offering a five year degree programme rather than a four
year degree programme. You can see everything's colour coded
here. So the red section of this degree is the engineering core.
So they're their subjects that all engineering students do. So
that covers things like engineering science, I mean, you
do you do some maths, you do some chemistry subjects, you do
physics, and then you learn those other professional
engineering skills like communication and
entrepreneurship, commercialization, innovation,
and things of that nature. So that's the red bit, then we've
got this light grey component, which is called the field of
practice. So the field of practice is a more advanced
stage, engineering subject that builds upon what was covered in
the course. So that's where you actually start to take
specialised subjects within your area. So for students starting
their degree, in year one, stage one, the field of practice
subject would be an introduction to the discipline, which would
be Introduction to Chemical Engineering, and then you sort
of move through a whole range of experiences, so that that
includes chemical process engineering, science, so things
like heat and mass transfer and thermodynamics and reactor
design, and things of that nature. But it also means
studying those digital literacy, fundamental subjects as well. So
we've got industrial data science and machine learning,
we've got industry for product development, we've got advanced
manufacturing, and subjects of that nature. So we're really
bringing together those two worlds for this particular
degree experience. You'll notice that this, this grey section is
electives. So students in this chemical process engineering
degree programme, have the choice of taking four six credit
point electives. And they don't necessarily have to be subjects
that the student undertake within the faculty, it may be
that the student chooses to take those electives outside of the
faculty. And if you have a look at engineering programmes around
Australia, you'll see that a lot of universities offer broadening
electives, and there's the opportunity to do that at UTS.
So for example, if you had particular interests in
developing business skills, you may qualify to do electives
within the business faculty, if you were interested, perhaps in
commercialization, legislation and things of that nature, it
may be attractive to try and undertake, for example, a
subject in the law faculty to develop those particular skills.
What you'll notice as well, there's a blue bit. So that's
what we call the final year capstone project. So you'll see
that in year five, in stage nine and stage 10, students have the
opportunity to undertake a final year research project. So that's
your own independent piece of work that you can undertake as
part of your degree. And it's quite often a real hallmark
feature of the engineering degree experience where when
graduates start to look for employers, they can, you know,
show their final year capstone project as a product of work
that they've been able to deliver.
Okay, just some more notes on the deployment professional
engineering practice. So this is one of the unique components of
our degree experience at UTS. So, as you saw on the previous
slide, we're offering two six months internships in stage four
and stage eight of the degree. I think one of the real attractive
features of the internship experience is that it enables
students to experiment a little bit while they're doing their
degree. I think the world is becoming a lot more of a
complicated place. And I think it's asking too much for every
recent school leaver to know exactly what it is that they're
going to pursue career wise. And we quite often get a lot of
feedback from students saying that, well, I tried this first
internship, and I was working in a particular industry that I
thought I was really passionate about. And they get to the end
of that six month internship, and they realise Actually, no,
that's not really what I want to do. I'm not really comfortable
working in an office, for example, doing designs and doing
lots of calculations. And then after that internship
experience, students will come back to UTS and study for
another three sessions in their degree. And then by the time
they get to the second internship, they say, well,
right, I can try things a little bit different now. I might want
to put more emphasis on potentially moving into a more
say practical role that could be more related to project
management, managing the activities of contractors and
emphasising their communication skills and project management
skills, and that's totally fine. And this does happen a lot. But
those two internships really give students a real eye opener
of what the what the industry is like in their particular area,
and they can graduate with a better sense of what sort of
trajectory they think that their career is going to take. So
that's one of the really important things here. So rather
than offering an engineering programme where students have 12
weeks of experience, you graduate with one year of
experience, I should also mention that UTS has a working
relationship with a large number of companies. I think the last
time I was querying this, I think we have a database of over
1000 companies that UTS have a productive working relationship
with. And that sort of sets the foundations for the sorts of
companies and industries that you can work in. Okay, so that's
just a short overview of our chemical process engineering
degree programme, you may refer when you may hear us refer to
that as CPE at the Q&A. I'm going to hand over again to
Danielle for the remainder of this presentation.
Thanks, Nick for that in depth insight into chemical process
engineering. So we'll just run through a few quick things to
help you with your course applications adjustment points
for your backgrounds, so the price themselves are added to
students raw ATAR to give them what we call a selection rank.
These adjustment points are capped at 13 total at UTS. The
adjustment points can be given for a number of factors. These
factors can include completing the UTS Engineering and IT
questionnaire, good results in relevant HSC subjects, your
agenda and special circumstances and more. If you'd like to find
out more about these adjustment points, please scan the QR code
on your screen now to be taken to an in depth page with these
details. Next we'd like to go through the UAC key dates. As
you can see, this is just a summary of the different dates
that will come between now until the peak period of HSC exams. We
have scholarships now available that are open and will be
closing mid September. We have a key date, Open Day, on the 27th
of August and hope that we might be able to join us then to help
answer any further questions you might have. And we also have all
the different rounds in which UAC are offers different course
release sessions, and also that the ATARS for New South Wales
and ACT is likely to be executed in mid December. Please note
that these dates are subject to change. And you can find out
more at that UAC key dates page just listed on this screen
below.
The UTS early entry programme. So the programme itself is
currently available for domestic students in Year 12. You can
apply through an online application that's different
through UAC. It's free to apply and applications and likely to
open in June and July and close in September. These dates are
yet to be confirmed, but we'll provide this information as soon
as possible. The offers themselves are provisional
offers, which means that you'll receive a conditional offer
before the HSC commences. But you must complete your HSC or
equivalent to get there to get the offer itself. If you'd like
to find out more, you can scan the QR code on your screen now
to get more information. Students support, at UTS we have
a number of student support opportunities. We have our
bridging courses offered in mathematics, physics and
chemistry to help support you while studying and to get you
prepared. We also have a system called U:PASS which stands for
peer assisted study succession and it's available for some
subjects. And the great thing is it's supported by students who
have previously undertaken the course and are years ahead of
you. So they have gone through it and can help assist you when needed.