Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering

Dr. Skip Rochefort is currently an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering in the School of Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering (http://cbee.oregonstate.edu/people/skip-rochefort) and the Executive Director of OSU Precollege Programs  (http://oregonstate.edu/precollege) and the Center for Outreach in Science and Engineering for Youth (COSEY) at Oregon State University.

He has degrees in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts (B.S., 1976), Northwestern University (M.S. 1978) and the University of California, San Diego (Ph.D., 1986). He has held several industrial research positions (Dow Chemical, Kodak, AT&T Bell Labs), and since 1993 he has been on the faculty at Oregon State University and has been a University Honors College Faculty member since 1995 and a UHC Eminent Professor since 2012 . He has been recognized for his teaching and advising activities by ASEE, AIChE, the College of Engineering, and Oregon State University. His research interest for the last 40 years has been in all areas of polymer engineering and science. He established the Polymer Research Laboratory in 1993 with complete capabilities for molecular, thermal, rheological, and surface characterization of polymers.

He has been involved in K-12 outreach and recruitment/retention issues in engineering since his arrival at OSU in 1993. During that time he has mentored over 100 high school and undergraduate students, and for those endeavors he has been recognized as the OSU 2013 Mentor of the Year and the Saturday Academy 2014 Science Educator of the Year. In 1997 he founded the Summer Experience in Science and Engineering for Youth (http://cbee.oregonstate.edu/sesey) a one-week research experience on the OSU campus which has served over 600 high school girls and ethnic minorities and engaged over 250 engineering undergrads as mentors and counselors. His passion is K-12 outreach for the recruitment and retention of women and minorities into engineering, with the current focus on introducing engineering science to Oregon youth at the middle school and high school levels.