Hall of Fame Member Biographies

Lance Lobban

Lobban joined the University of Oklahoma as an assistant professor in the School of Sustainable Chemical, Biological, and Materials Engineering (SCBME) in 1987. Since early in his tenure, he has sought to enhance student engagement and learning through innovations in pedagogy and technology, using a mix of demonstrations, paired and group activities, pre-recorded materials, simulations, and lectures. In the undergraduate laboratory, he introduced critical thinking exercises that asked students to explain anomalies in collected data, while in classroom courses, he introduced active learning and demonstrations of important concepts. The effectiveness of Lobban’s teaching has led to multiple awards–including the OU Regents Award for Outstanding Teaching, the OU Presidential Professorship, and the David Ross Boyd Professorship–and he has been selected 12 times by chemical engineering undergraduates as an outstanding chemical engineering professor.

Lobban has been the principal investigator or co-principal on research grants totaling over $25 million, applying his expertise in chemical reaction engineering and catalysis to energy and sustainability areas. He has co-authored more than 80 archival publications and patents, and his leadership in major state and federal grants helped vault OU chemical engineering to national leadership in the catalytic conversion of biomass.

Lobban served as SCBME Director from 1998 to 2014. During that time, undergraduate and graduate enrollment and research activity all reached record levels. He has frequently served on the school’s Committee A for departmental governance and led the development of major research proposals to state and federal agencies. He has led and served on numerous department, college, and university committees and external advisory boards, including for the department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Kansas, where he was inducted into the department’s alumni hall of fame in 2015.