Overview of the Department

USC is among the first institutions to provide formal chemical engineering education in the Philippines in the early 1950’s through its offering of the Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering (BSChE) program. It produced its first batch of graduates in 1956. To date, the department has over two thousand alumni to its roster.

Part of the alumni are the graduates from the Master of Science in Chemical Engineering (MSChE) and Master of Engineering major in Chemical Engineering (MEnggChE) programs which were first offered in 2001 and 2004, respectively. The alumni are now engaged in various professional pursuits locally and abroad in the diverse areas of manufacturing, business and entrepreneurship, design and consultancy, research and development, IT/computing, public service, sales, law, environmental protection, human resource management, and education.

The BSChE program is accredited by the Philippine Accrediting Association of Schools, Colleges, and Universities (PAASCU) since 1974. For the same program, the department has been awarded the distinction as Center of Development (COD) by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) since 1998. Both CHED and the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) recognize the department as a delivering institution for graduate programs supported by scholarship grants from these two government agencies.

The department maintains a lean set of faculty members who have research specializations in the field of bioprocess engineering. They teach core and allied chemical engineering courses taken by third-year to fifth-year students numbering about one hundred fifty (150) in any given semester. Because of a fully verticalized structure, the faculty members also teach graduate courses aligned to their specializations.

Approximately 3 of every 4 undergraduate students in the department come from the cities and municipalities of Cebu province. The rest are from other provinces in Central Visayas (5%), Eastern Visayas (11%) and Mindanao (6%).

The department’s local and international engagements serve to enhance the faculty members and students alike. These linkages are aligned to teaching-learning, research, and community extension services, and come in various forms such as collaborations in research, contract researches with industry, professional consultancy,
industry immersion of students, and rendering of analytical services.