(587i) Chilean Experience Implementing A Chemical and Environmental Engineering Program

Free trade agreements and the global economy have both impacted the demand for new educational options. Among the many, environmental engineering has been one in the engineering disciple that has received special attention from the college freshmen. For many of them in the Chilean experience, this new profession represents an opportunity to quickly join a wealthy mining company. For others not so ambitious, this is just an opportunity to be “greener.” The challenge is then for the educational institutions to respond with a sound program to meet the costumers needs. In the paper, two full program implementations are presented as examples of curriculum development effort. In particular, the focus of the analysis is to demonstrate what are the basic requirements for accreditation purposes and the reporting of results after ten years of implementations. Future new efforts are also discussed with identification of potential challenges and how to overcome them.