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CHE Department History - Department Chairs
Dr. Walter H. Beisler - (1922-1964)
 For
many years Walter Beisler was "Mr. Chemical Engineering" at UF. He was in charge
from 1922, when he arrived, to 1964, when he retired. When chemical engineering
became a department, he served as its head (now called chairman). He introduced
courses into the curriculum and taught them all. From 1922 to 1936 he was the
sole member of the CHE faculty. The minutes of the early meetings of the student
Chemical Engineering Society (now the Student Chapter of AIChE) show Beisler was
always in attendance, explaining the various aspects of chemical engineering and
noting the job possibilities in this new profession. He was a steady, faithful
performer. One of his former students tells of a class in which there were ten
men and one woman. One day, for some reason, the men failed to come to class.
Dr. Beisler came into the room, looked at the woman sitting there, and without
comment, wrote materials on the board and lectured for the full period, as if
the whole class was present.
Dr. Beisler received his B.S. and M.S. at Rutgers in 1918 and 1919 with a major
in chemistry and a minor in engineering. At Princeton, he received an M.S. in
1921 and a D.Sc. in 1922 in organic and physical chemistry. He worked part-time
for DuPont during those college years, and he spent summers, when not teaching
at Florida, working for other chemical companies.
It wasn't easy trying to create a chemical engineering department with little or
no assistance from the university or the state. While it was in the Chemistry
Department, CHE was an unappreciated stepchild that always lacked funds and
equipment. Even as late as 1955, when CHE was a department in the Engineering
College, Beisler complained that it suffered from inadequate facilities, lack of
space, and low faculty salaries. But he plugged along, and by the time he
retired in 1964 things were looking a little better.
During the time he served in the Department, the number of students with CHE
degrees increased from 2 to 517. The first M.S. degree was awarded in 1933 and
the first Ph.D. in 1951. By the time of his retirement, the Department had
awarded 37 M.S. degrees and 22 Ph.D.'s.
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