With the increase in global production of light alkanes, there is renewed interest in pathways for conversion of these feedstocks into building block chemicals.  The most important building block chemicals are olefins, and as a result, pathways from these alkanes to olefins have renewed importance. For the conversion of propane into propylene, many commercial processes use expensive, precious metals based on Pt.  In this work, we describe our recent efforts designing catalysts based on low cost, earth abundant metals for the selective, endothermic dehydrogenation of propane to produce propylene.  Using alumina supported first row transition metal oxides (Co, Fe), we demonstrate how such compositions can be used as active, selective dehydrogenation catalysts under traditional, fixed bed, laboratory scale operation.  In the case of Co, tetrahedrally dispersed metal species in a cobalt aluminate matrix effectively act as Lewis acidic catalysts for propane dehydrogenation [1].  These sites appear stable over modestly extended cycle times.  In the case of Fe, detailed characterization of the catalyst before, during and after the reaction demonstrates that the Fe sites change over the course of the reaction, with stable performance with good activity and selectivity correlating with the formation of an iron carbide phase [2].  Further improvement and optimization of the catalysts can be best achieved via deployment in more realistic, scalable reactors.