Marquez Hall - A Vision for the Future!!
Marathon Oil Corporation’s donates $1 million to support Marathon Center of Excellence for Reservoir Studies and the New Petroleum Engineering Building.
A Message from Dr. Ramona Graves - September 2008
It’s been a good year! Manika Prasad, who you met in last year’s newsletter, has just completed her first year with us. Despite some personal setbacks she had a very successful start. This year we will be welcoming THREE more new faculty – Yu-Shu Wu, Professor and Dwayne Bourgoyne, Assistant Professor officially start in August and Xiaolong Yin, Assistant Professor starts in January. Yu-Shu comes to us from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Dwayne from ExxonMobil Research, and Xiaolong from Princeton (see their articles in following pages). Even though they have not officially started they are already making significant contributions.
Yu-Shu invited me to China so he could introduce me to some of our future research and education collaborators. While there I met with his university colleagues at China Petroleum University and Daqing Petroleum University and his industry connections at PetroChina and Sinopec. I retuned home a week before the Olympics started and the television coverage did not begin to do justice to what a magnificent city Beijing has become! My daughter Lacey went with me and was hosted by Yu-Shu’s lovely wife Jiamin, and his daughter Stephanie.
Dwayne got an early start this summer and has been actively begun writing research proposals. He has also been talking with various CSM administrators about reviving the Energy Minor and acting as Co-Director. Additionally he did some teaching with our Libyan outreach students. Although Xiaolong is finishing his commitments at Princeton, both he and Dwayne attended Petroleum Super School – our 3 week short course for industry folks who are working as petroleum engineers but have degrees in related disciplines.
I know that I, the rest of the faculty, and staff are really looking forward to working with them. Stay tuned to next year’s newsletter for more new hires to come! I’m still the Interim Department Head but we plan on filling the position this fall semester. There are four excellent candidates and the campus interview process should begin this September.
President Scoggins, also known as a PE Research Faculty, has also been giving us a helping hand by guest lecturing in our seminar classes and serving on several PhD committees in the department. If you read the summer issue of Mines Magazine you know we need a lot of help. On page 24 you can see that we graduated the second largest undergraduate graduating class (Engineering was the largest) and the third largest graduate class (we followed Engineering and Economics and Business). I think we have hit steady state with about 100-120 undergraduates per class and about 80 graduate students.
(Kazakhstan: Ramona with John Humphrey, Geology and Geological Engineering Department Head, Eve Sprunt of Chevron and Andre’ Revil, Professor in Geophysics at the Kazakhstan National Technical University Musem.)
From last year’s newsletter you might recall that my son Jacob had fallen off my roof and broken his back and crushed his hip. He has recovered wonderfully! After 10 months of serious down time the doctors gave him the ok to get out of bed and learn to walk again!! His back will have no long term effects but they are still watching his hip, with a possible replacement in the future.
With Jake mobile again, I was able to start traveling again. Chevron has selected CSM to join their University Partner Program. Kazakhstan National Technical University is also part of their UPP so they invited John Humphrey, Head Geology and Geological Engineer, Andre Revil, Geophysics, and Eve Sprunt, Chevron Director of UPP, to Almaty, Kazakhstan to evaluate KazNTU’s programs and determine how we can work together for our mutual benefit. We defined several areas of mutual interest for research, teaching, field trips, and faculty and student exchange.
We continue to have other strong exchange programs – especially with Leoben, Austria; Delft, Netherlands; and Adelaide, Australia. In March, I visited two of our exchange students, Claire and Zach, at the Technical University of Delft. Discussion with TUD administration and faculty showed the potential develop other research and teaching activities. Since Jennifer Miskimins, now a tenured Associate Professor, was involved in a SPE Tight Gas workshop in the Netherlands at the same time, I also attended the meeting. It is clear that the US and our department, in particular, are at the leading edge of tight gas reservoir exploitation. With the addition of new faculty, we plan on further capitalize on our (Always moving like she is walking into a 100 mph head wind) expertise, experience, and location!!
Marquez Hall plans and fund raising continue with renewed excitement as we near reaching the Tim and Bernie Marquez challenge! Several other alumni have shown their support with substantial donations. See center pages of newsletter for an update and a great quote from Will Fleckenstein as to why he is supporting this exciting opportunity for the PE department. I sincerely hope each of you will consider showing your support through a donation so we will be close to our goal for building and furnishing Marquez Hall when we have the ground breaking ceremonies in the spring. Please contact me with any questions.
And finally – many of you joined us at the Anaheim SPE ATCE alumni function last year when we celebrated Craig’s over 27 years of service as the Petroleum Engineering Department Head. What a great party it was! I hope you will all join this year to meet our new faculty, laugh with the old (I know politically incorrect) faculty, and in general, celebrate your alunminess!