Continuing Professional Education

After graduation I took a two-week vacation at home before embarking on the train to take me to southern California and work at Shell. Although I had successfully finished college I had still much to learn “on the job.”

During the war years I had no educational courses but this changed during the years I spent in San Francisco and Emeryville. I attended a number of courses that Shell sponsored, such as a Fortran programming course while I was still working in San Francisco and a course in statistics and a public speaking course at Emeryville. Whether Shell ever benefited from my attended at these courses is doubtful. I never pursued computer programming, didn’t use the statistics procedure and only occasionally gave oral presentations.

In connection with my work at Shell I attended some of the Science and Engineering meetings that Shell Chemical held (at the Wigwam resort outside of Phoenix, Arizona), various technical society meetings (principally AIChE), and meetings of Fractionation Research http://www.fri.org/ to which Shell subscribed. At some of these I gave talks. I suppose these meetings could be considered of an educational nature, though not formally such.

During the time between when I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and when I married Jean I took various courses at the University of California — these were all in the chemical engineering department and included such courses as diffusional operation. For these I received actual academic credit and I suppose I could have pursued and eventually received a master’s degree in Chemical Engineering but I didn’t. This activity ceased once I was married.