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CHE Department History - Some Old Grad
Recollections
Charles "Andy" Stokes, Sc.D. - BSChE 1938
 When
I entered the University in the fall of 1933, at the height of the Depression,
there was a record freshman class of 3,000—no jobs were available and tuition
was about $350 per year. Board and room at the dormitories ran about $60-80 per
month. The more affluent ate at boarding houses, paying about $21 a week for two
meals a day five days a week, and lived either in the dorms or off campus.
In those days we were in chemical engineering from day one.
Professor Beisler even taught a section
of freshman chemistry. Our CHE class was a large one—maybe 20 or so—but it was
down to 8 or 10 by graduation. We had to take foundry, hydraulics, surveying,
and mechanics along with the then-usual CHE courses. Required math went through
calculus and there were electives like vector mechanics and differential
equations. I attempted the former but my career as a jazz sideman caused me to
drop the 9 AM class.
Our Unit Operations lab consisted of a filter press, a distillation column, a
jacketed kettle, a tray dryer, some mixers, and I think an evaporator and a few
grinders of one sort or another. At first we had only one professor with
graduate lab assistants, but then we became a two-man department, adding Dr.
Jesse Mason from the University of Kentucky. After I left, or perhaps in my last
semester (the fall of 1938—I worked one semester out of school),
Dr. Ralph Morgen came aboard.
All of our three professors had industrial chemical engineering experience and
it showed. They made chemical engineering real—not just some theoretical
exercise.
We were strongly trained in chemistry: general, qualitative, and quantitative
analysis, organic, physical, and fuel and water chemistry. These courses have
helped me through the 57 years since my B.S. degree, 50 years of which were in
industry.
A big event was the Engineers' Fair. Here we had a chance to demonstrate
something real: electroplating and stripping, special organic preparations like
chemiluminescence, manufacture of alcohol or synthetic booze from sugar or corn,
and many other industrial chemical activities.
The bugaboo of most of us was thermodynamics under Professor Ebaugh—a favorite
course of mine, and so it has remained through graduate school and industrial
work. The courses that bugged me were Applied Mechanics and Foundry.
We were actually a part of the Arts and Sciences College, but we were not aware
of being different from the various College of Engineering courses. Later this
was changed and Chemical Engineering became a true College of Engineering
course.
Jobs were scarce even in 1938. A 75˘ per hour paper mill job was all that most
of us could look forward to. I chose to go to graduate school. Wisconsin and
Minnesota turned down my graduation with honors record, but M.I.T. did not.
There I studied with the greats: Lewis, McAdams, Sherwood, Whitman, Gilliland,
Weber, Meissner, and Hoyt Hottel. Hoyt is now 96 or 98 and still goes to the
office each day. I am 80, working full-time at consulting, and traveling perhaps
50,000 miles a year on average. I may be the oldest full-time working CHE
graduate at U. of F.—perhaps even at M.I.T.
There is little more to say about our early history—and I apologize for making
it somewhat my history—as the course ran smoothly, turning out graduates who
were successful and losing only about half of the freshmen on the way to their
B.S. degree.
In the early 1950s, Dr. Beisler instituted a professional degree for outstanding
accomplishment in industry reported in a thesis to the Department. Larry (L.W.)
Mims, Class of 1936, and I was awarded such degrees in 1951. I had hired Larry
to take my place running Retort Chemical, Gainesville, for what is now the Cabot
Corporation, Boston. His thesis was on wood distillation; mine was on the
application of sonic energy to aerosol collection based on pioneering work in
the field on carbon black smoke done as Research Director of Cabot.
In setting up the Charles A. Stokes Professorship in Chemical Engineering, my
intention is to pay the University back for the splendid education I got at a
very low cost, defrayed entirely by waiting on tables, playing in two dance
bands, and working part-time in the State Road Testing Laboratories north of
Gainesville.
Comment: Dr. Stokes is President of Stokes Consulting Group, which
specializes in scaling up technology from laboratory to the plant. He is also
interested in environmental controls, especially air pollution and energy
conversion. After receiving his B.S. from Florida he went to M.I.T. and earned a
doctor of science degree. He taught at M.I.T. from 1940 to 1945, then went to
Cabot Corp. as Director or Research. Ten years later Andy became Vice President
and Technical Director for Texas Butadiene and Chemical Corp., and in 1960 he
went to Cities Service as VP for Technology and Planning. In 1969 he stepped out
on his own with his consulting group in Naples, Florida. He has won many awards
including the Engineer of the Year award in 1977 from the Central Jersey
Engineering Council and in 1984-85 from the Calusa Chapter of the Florida
Engineering Society, and Outstanding Alumnus of the Year for 1990 from the UF
Chemical Engineering Department. He served as Director of AIChE from 1955-58 and
was elected a Fellow in 1973.
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