45 YEARS OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING IN THE UNIVERSITY CITY OF CLUJ-NAPOCA 1971-2016. LANDMARKS ON THE ESTABLISHMENT, DEVELOPMENT AND AFFIRMATION OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITARY CITY OF CLUJ-NAPOCA

Abstract

In Cluj, chemistry engineering education officially begins in 1971/72 with the Polytechnic Institute (IPC) setting up an Industrial Chemistry faculty [1] with engineering and sub-engineers, specializing in Technology of Inorganic Substances (TIS) and Technology of Building Materials (TBM), forms of higher education with a chemical engineering profile, science, discipline and profession with a specific field, and its own and autonomous organization status. [2] Unfortunately only the last proposal [3] (sub-engineers) was approved at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, which was a necessary, but insufficient solution for a viable faculty with legal personality, structure and autonomy of organization that had the approval of the Ministry of Forest Economy and Building Materials (MEFMC), and not for the first one by the Ministry of Chemical Industry (MICh), with the observation: “lack of material basis, specialists and experience” in the field. Considering, however, the intensive priority development of the chemical industry in the Transylvanian area, requiring highly qualified specialists, it was agreed to reopen the proposal for the next five-year period (1976-1980), conditioned in some ways also by the evolution, respectively, the performance of the already approved TBM Section [4]. It was, nevertheless, a hope, an encouragement, a motivation to mobilize, at any cost, for success. The process was completed in 1977, however, not in the Polytechnic, but in the University as a result of the transfer, in 1974, of the TBM Section from the Faculty of Civil Engineering to Chemistry in 1974, by Decree No.147 / 1974 [5], so that the decision came too late and not in favour of the demanded Industrial Chemistry faculty [1], which was never established, but merely changed one master for another. [6]