Guio is a great guy, and this class is the culmination of all you learned in ChemE and is very applicable to industry. Probably the most applicable class you’ll take here. Pretty easy class too, but it’s pretty obvious that Guio is new at teaching and the kinks are still being worked out. Furthermore, this class is focused more on the technical aspects of design, with Economic Analysis being more of an afterthought, and is focused on petrochemical plant design.
——
I took this class with Guio and Li running things, and Guio did most of the lectures. His lectures were more like documentaries about the weekly topics. They gave you lots of information relevant to industry and curiosity, but were quite long and dry at times. Still engaging for the first hour or so. He also did a pretty bad at managing time, spending an hour on the first 20 slides, racing through the next 80 slides, and then telling you to read the last 20 slides on your own time. Think of lectures as documentaries for your own curiosity, rather than tools to help you do homework. If you want to learn how to do the homework, attend discussion instead.

Li was a far, far better lecturer, but he only lectured during the last two lectures. Far more engaging.
——
In lieu of exams, we were given “Quizzes.” The quizzes were basically “Do homework problems, just with the numbers and a couple of process units swapped.” Definitely a strong point of this class; the homework accurately reflected the difficulty of exams. If you do the homework well and review the answer keys, you should ace the quizzes. Furthermore, the homework was generally manageable. Usually no more than 5 hours per week of it, and you can just look at discussion to see how to do them. Sometimes crunch time happens, but no more than once or twice a quarter. NOTE: Homework does NOT have completion-based grading. Think of them as untimed quizzes.
——
Some homeworks required PRO/II. They were basically “Do the last homework but use PRO/II for calculations.” You got to work with a group to do them. I was lucky and had good groups, but even then, they took quite a while to do as we had to use PRO/II, draw PFDs on Visio, and write up a report.
——
The senior design project was started in the middle of the quarter. Unfortunately, it really depended on your group and group leader. If you have a bad subteam (or worse, a lazy team) and/or an ineffective group leader, expect to spend lots of time trying to carry you group. If you have a good group and/or good group leader, the project is merely intimidating, but actually quite manageable. The “final” for this project was a presentation regarding the plant location your group chose.
——
Also, like every ChemE class you’ve probably taken so far, the textbook is 100% optional; I never needed to open it since the slides summarize everything.

This class wasn't really even a class; it was just the senior design project.

Even if you have a solid group and team leader, the project is pretty bad. The first few lectures were okay, but most weren’t helpful. Unfortunately, Guio did most of the lecturing, and he’s not that engaging. Even though Li is far better at lecturing than Guio, his lectures weren’t that helpful either. You can tell that neither of them have any idea what they’re talking about, since they’re academia guys talking about industry, and even worse, industry that has nothing to do with their research.

The project is simply using computer software to design a plant and writing a report. You kind-of learn design. Most of the learning is project management, typing a report, and learning that you’re definitely not qualified to design a plant. And hope your group actually is willing to work.

Guio and Li were great dudes, but they shouldn’t be teaching this class. Someone from industry should be teaching this, not two professors who only do research on the microscopic and nanoscopic level.