Dale Kirmse Retires
 Professor
Dale Kirmse retired on June 30, 2003 after serving for 39 years as a faculty
member in the chemical engineering department. Tim and Sandy Anderson hosted a
party in July to honor Dale's contributions to the department and to the field
of chemical engineering.
Dale received his bachelors degree in 1960 from Oklahoma State University and
his doctorate in chemical engineering in 1964 from Iowa State University. Dale
joined the faculty at UF shortly after finishing graduate school. Since that
time, Dale has taken leaves of absence to work with several companies, including
Union Carbide through a Ford Foundation Internship, DuPont, Occidental Chemical
and Reynolds, Smith and Hills. Dale first became involved in energy related
activities while working on a project on integrated utility systems with
Reynolds, Smith and Hills. This experience ultimately lead to Dale's involvement
in establishing the Florida Power Corporation/University of Florida Cogeneration
Facility located on the UF campus near the chemical engineering building. Dale
also co-founded the University of Florida Industrial Assessment Center with
Prof. Barney Capehart, professor emeritus in the department of industrial and
systems engineering at UF. As assistant director, and later as director, Dale
audited over 150 manufacturing companies in Florida and Georgia.
During his 39 years in the department, Dale has taught all of the
undergraduate chemical engineering courses and many of the graduate courses.
Dale was particularly fond of teaching the senior design course since it
provided him with the opportunity to expose undergraduates to a diverse set of
chemical engineering applications. For the past five years, Dale graciously
served as the undergraduate coordinator for the chemical engineering department.
He very much enjoyed his interactions with our undergraduate students during
this time. The entire faculty greatly appreciated Dale's work as the
undergraduate coordinator.
Dale has been traveling a lot since his retirement. He and his wife Sue have
been visiting relatives and they took a cruise to the Caribbean this past
summer. Dale has also taken up genealogy as a hobby. He spent much of September
in Missouri looking through historical society archives and interviewing distant
relatives for information about his great and great-great grandparents. Dale and
Sue are sponsoring a Kirmse family reunion in mid-November. They plan to
continue to visit relatives and will travel to New Zealand some time next year.
Dale remains active in the department and is currently working on projects to
enhance the educational experiences of our undergraduate students. He is
planning to rebuild the Cogeneration Academic Interface using new technologies.
This effort will emphasize visualization of unit operations and will provide
real-time data for student
engineering problems.
| 
