Ashland Invests $30K in UC Chemical Engineering Lab Enhancements

“The story starts with an 18-year-old University of Cincinnati chemical engineering co-op student starting to work for the first time, scared as heck…Take that engineer through various jobs in research, operations and eventually back to lead the department he started with many years ago. I am sure you have guessed by now that story is mine—but it could be any UC student’s story,” reflects

Scott Simmers

, director of the Ashland, Inc., Global Engineering Department.

Ashland, Inc.

is a global leader in providing specialty chemical solutions to customers in a wide range of consumer and industrial markets and they have been a proud partner of the

University of Cincinnati

’s

cooperative education program (also known as “co-op”)

for more than four decades.

Simmers began his career with Ashland as a

College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS)

chemical engineering co-op student in 1979 and today, he is leading the Fortune 500 Company’s latest contribution to CEAS: a $30,000 donation to the

chemical engineering department

.

Ashland’s funding only further affirms their commitment to support UC and CEAS—this donation will greatly enrich the classroom experience for chemical engineering students as it will provide the necessary backing for renovations to senior lab experiments and software systems.

CEAS Dean Teik C. Lim,  Herman Schneider Professor of Mechanical Engineering, explains, “Ashland is key to the success of us educating our students. Our mission here [at CEAS] is to produce great engineers, and the lab experience coupled with the experiential learning that our students go through like co-op is part of the fabric of our curriculum. Ashland provides cooperative education experience for our students and is now supporting the enhancement of our chemical engineering laboratory to make it much more modern, much more relevant to the needs of chemical engineers today.”

Simmers agrees, “Fostering a better educational experience both at the University and within Ashland is important to generate practically oriented chemical engineers that will be the future plant managers and department heads and even CEOs.”

Select to watch the video “Ashland Supports UC Engineering”