40 “You have to take the hardcopy stuff and turn it into digital stuff or you can’t use it,” says ’86 geography alumnus Dale Lightfoot. As head of OSU’s department of geography, Lightfoot knows a new OSU partnership will profoundly affect GIS research. OSU’s new alliance with the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Foundation will create a geographic information system digital geology consortium. “This is providing a source of information that heretofore has been in the archives of the AAPG but not readily accessible in a digital format that field scholars and researchers can use anywhere in the world,” Lightfoot says. Pickens’ Brand of Success T. Boone Pickens, above, met with a group from OSU’s College of Arts and Sciences, below, at his ranch in Texas this spring to discuss a new partnership that will increase student research opportunities and provide a valuable new tool for researchers and the public. Among Pickens’ guests from Arts and Sciences are, pictured from left, Dean Peter M.A. Sherwood and Boone Pickens School of Geology faculty members: Priyank Jaiswal, Estella Atekwana, Jay Gregg, Tracy Quan, Anna Cruse, Jeffrey Byrnes, Eliot Atekwana, Todd Halihan, Daniel Lao Davila, Darwin Boardman and Jim Puckette. AAPG, the world’s largest professional geosciences organization, has an extensive digital database, with online search-and-retrieval of the full archive of its special publications, including its 91-year-old scientific journal, plus the publications of other notable organizations. Mike Larson, ’93 geology alumnus coordinator for OSU cartography services, and students in OSU’s geology and geography departments will research the database and compile geologic and scientific resource information to produce GIS mapbased products for professionals and the public. For students this means industryspecific research projects and the enhanced skill sets that attract employers. For the public, the new GIS digital geology consortium means an unprecedented access to geosciences information. As with many transforming new OSU initiatives, alumnus T. Boone Pickens, ’51 geology alumnus, made this first-of-its-kind partnership possible with a $9.4 million gift from the T. Boone Pickens Foundation to the AAPG Foundation. “We were looking for a way to bring OSU and AAPG together,” says Rick Fritz, ’74 geology alumnus and executive director of the AAPG Foundation. “Boone’s primary interest is OSU, but he’s been a good, active member of AAPG since 1954. We realized the geography department had such a good GIS program, and we were actually looking, at the time, for a contractor. It was just a natural fit,” Fritz says. “We went to Boone, discussed it with him and he loved the idea.” Jacob Longan, ’05 WORDS Hawta Khayyat PHOTOGRAPHY / DALE LIGHTFOOT Jason Caniglia PHOTO / T. BOONE PICKENS AND GROUP
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