Bridging the Gap between Academia and Industry: Developing the Next Generation of Petroleum Engineers and Geoscientists
The forum will focus on key areas affecting the training of the next generation of petroleum engineers and geoscientists. The idea of the forum grew out of a series of colloquia on petroleum engineering education (CPEE) dating back to 1991. Past CPEEs were geared towards aligning education fundamentals with meeting industry’s needs as well as developing continuous improvement processes and refining program assessment methods. Over time, the SPE Board of Directors has become concerned about potentially significant problems developing in the global petroleum engineering education system and the ability of that system to sustainably produce the talent that industry will need for the future.
Key gaps to achieve a sustainable, global petroleum engineering education system have been identified; we must:
- Build collective collaboration between industry and academia to establish local faculty and students, especially in developing and emerging petroleum producing countries,
- Improve cross-functional cooperation between petroleum engineers and geoscientists,
- Develop better mechanisms to address demand/supply cycle in the petroleum industry,
- Create new education delivery partnerships and innovative thinking in and between universities,
- Establish pioneering relationships between industry and academia to supplement teaching gaps, research funding, and knowledge transfer to future generations of faculty and students,
- Utilize state-of-the-art pedagogical and communication technologies, and
- Innovate to provide better mentoring capabilities and tools for use across industry and academia.
The forum will analyze existing efforts to bridge the gaps, which are currently sponsored by the SPE, AAPG, SEG, academia, and industry, to determine effectiveness and efficiency. Additionally, the forum will focus on curriculum and knowledge sets to lessen the time to autonomy for the newly hired engineer or geoscientist. With constantly changing energy sector economics, the forum will need to focus well beyond 2020 to effect change now.
Strong global representation by industry, petroleum engineering faculty, geoscientist faculty, and government will promote concrete outcomes from the forum. A white paper will be generated from this event.