Welcome

Dear Fellow Chemical Engineer,

The purpose of this website is to provide information about my candidacy for Director of the AIChE. In addition, by suggesting some possible goals and strategic plans for accomplishing them, I hope to stimulate discussions with members about what they feel is needed to improve the AIChE.

If you have questions or comments, please send them to me by email - reintjes@newenglandequity.com - and I will respond directly. Those that appear to be of general interest will be posted and answered on this website in the Q & A with Rob section.

Why I Want to be a Director

The AIChE is at a critical point in time. Thanks to great leadership over the past several years, we have survived a financial crisis and are ready to enter our next 100 years. Now is the time for the members to elect a leadership team with visionary ability. We need leaders who can make the right choices charting a path to success for the next century.

Many of the people involved with the Boston section and with Tufts University have written to me about my qualifications as a leader. One wrote:

“... I have found Rob to be a remarkably innovative and persistent individual who is very goal oriented and success driven. He has ... accomplished in an exceedingly short period of time what several Tufts ‘committees’ have not been able to accomplish for literally, years. ...”

Another commented:

“With his great ideas, power of persuasion and ability to implement new initiatives, Rob has been instrumental in revitalizing and transforming the AIChE Boston section in the past few years. We need a person with his capabilities, experience, and enthusiasm at the National level on the AIChE Board of Directors.”

For more comments see What People are saying

Serving on your Board of Directors is very important to me. If elected, I am committed to focusing my AIChE leadership experience and entrepreneurial skills to help design and accelerate the implementation of a successful strategy to help the Institute grow and prosper in the future.

How to Improve the AIChE

My sense is that the majority of members agree on what needs to be done. This includes:

  • Become more relevant to members and society
  • Strengthen the local sections, divisions and forums
  • Increase membership, especially more graduating seniors
  • Retain our younger members
  • Improve revenues
  • Build a stronger asset base
  • Position AIChE as the leader in emerging areas of technology
  • Expand globally
  • Continue to provide benefits such as CEP, insurance and career services

But - How do we make this happen???

The challenge is how to do this quickly and decisively without falling backwards into the insolvency pit our leadership has just pulled us out of so successfully! Leaders are needed that can keep one eye on the bottom line and the other on future horizons.

We are headed in the right direction. The current leadership of the AIChE has begun a major update of our long-range strategy. Out of this process will come a new plan for the future success of the Institute. With this is mind, I would like to propose a few ideas to stimulate discussions among members that could help in this strategic planning process.

A Plan for the Future

Designing a strategic plan to aggressively launch the AIChE forward while avoiding the financial pitfalls we encountered in the past is somewhat of a “Catch-22” dilemma. It appears that we need added revenues from new members in order to cover the costs of increasing our membership services - but we need more services to attract and retain new members. What is needed are some fresh thoughts about how to capture the attention of prospective members without incurring additional costs.

Relevancy & Publicity

What immediately comes to mind are “Relevancy” and “Publicity.” If we can do something that increases the relevancy of the Institute for prospective members as well as for society - and - this is a big piece - make sure that what we do gets noticed in the national and world press - then a lot of the other goals listed above will fall into place. The more society realizes what chemical engineers and the chemical engineering profession have to offer - the better it is for each of the members as well as for the AIChE.

Societal Impact

The broad goals of the Institute as stated in the AIChE Constitution are:

  • To advance Chemical Engineering in theory and practice
  • To maintain a high professional standard among the members
  • To serve society, particularly where chemical engineering can contribute to the public interest

In brief, our purpose is to serve the profession, the professional and society.

If we want to increase the relevancy of our organization - and of Chemical Engineering in general - we need to do something that lets the world know what we as a profession have to offer. One way to do this is to focus on improving the third part of our goals - societal impact.

Chemical Engineers are uniquely equipped to help solve many societal problems in the world today. By focusing on just one area to start, we can begin producing results faster, and the world will take notice sooner. It was with this thought in mind that I developed the ideas shown in the Goals for the AIChE section.

Rob Reintjes