One Half Dozen

I don't guarantee that my count is accurate, but of all my contemporaries when I was in grad school, a total of 6 of us have gone on to be professors. Besides myself, there is

• W. Burghardt (Northwestern)
• M. E. Mackey (Delaware)
• A. Tree (Oklahoma State)
• B. Khomami (Tennessee)
• B. Edwards (Tennessee)

That's a pretty impressive number considering that the research group was only about 10 people. It's even more surprising given the general atmosphere of the department. This was chemical engineering, not chemistry, and the overall attitudes towards teaching vs. working in industry are entirely different than what I perceive it to be in chemistry. It is perfectly acceptable in a chemical engineering department to have no desire to teach or do a post doc (assuming that you could even find one, as they are rather rare). To express a desire to work in industry puts you in the majority of students and that career option is never considered a failure.

But despite all of this, there are now 6 (or more (?)) of us working as professors.