2 unconventional hydrocarbon research center in collaboration with the College of Engineering. We saw record numbers of our faculty and students attend national meetings. We took the national GSA meeting by storm and had 21 presentations authored and co-authored by students and faculty; 11 presentations at AAPG mid-Continent; 4 presentations at SEG; and 8 presentations at AGU. With the talented faculty that is now in place, the recruitment of talented students and the resources to carry out our research and teaching mission, we are definitely a department on the rise! Thanks to the support of the alumni and friends and the university our School has experienced tremendous growth in faculty (14 plus undergraduate advisor), students (213), and research grant awards in 2013. Also, for the first time ~60% of graduate student support was raised through faculty research grants and alumni donations in the form of scholarships and fellowships. With the three new endowed chairs (Dr. Mohamed Abdelsalam, the Pickens Chair of Geophysics, Dr. Michael Grammer the Chesapeake Energy Corporation Chair of Petroleum Geoscience and Dr. Jack Pashin the Devon Chair of Basin Research) now in place we are experiencing record numbers of applications and inquiries to our graduate program. We are essentially bursting at the seams. This has allowed us to be more selective bringing in top graduate students into our program. Our graduate students come from 25 different states and from 17 different countries; we are presently able to admit only 26% of applicants into our graduate program. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 Number of Students Calender Year Undergraduate Masters Doctoral Enrollment Through Fall 2013 Undergraduate enrollment stands at 135, a slight drop from 140 in 2012. However, we saw the largest graduate class we have had in the last decade – 77 students - up from 66 in 2012. By the fall of 2013, we had 16 PhD students and 61 MS students enrolled in the School. We continue to improve the quality and caliber of our graduate students and expect them to be successfully integrated into the work force or continue on to graduate school. This year, applicants to our graduate program came from many different States and several countries aboard. The completed applications number more than 125 at the moment of this writing. Many of the applicants have excellent credentials; however, we are limited by funding and may only admit about 15%. The number of B.S. degrees awarded in Geology was 17. We graduated 7 students with M.S. degrees which is down from 21 in 2012. We graduated 1 PhD student in 2013 and we have 2 Ph.D. students expected to graduate in 2014. Geology faculty were awarded about $1.9M in new grants between January 1 2013- December 31 2013. The $1.9M in research grants in 2013 stands as the largest ever in the history of the School (Please see article on research award abstracts). 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 Degrees Granted Calender Year BS Degrees MS Degrees Ph.D. Degrees Degrees Granted Through Summer 2013 After several years of petitioning for a professional undergraduate advisor, we were finally awarded a position that is shared with Chemistry and Physics (however, Geology has the majority of the students). In August Ms. Sheri Orr joined the department as the new undergraduate advisor and is housed on the 4th Floor in NRC right next to Dr. Puckette’s office. For the first time in decades Dr. Puckette does not have 135 students to deal with and can finally spend more time on projects and courses. Ms. Orr has been a tremendous addition and asset to our program (read more about Ms. Orr in this issue). 0 500,000 1,000,000 1,500,000 2,000,000 2,500,000 Dollars Fiscal Year Grants Awarded Grant Expenditures Grants Through FY 2013 We are currently in the process of recruiting two new faculty in the areas of sediment/organic geochemistry and geofluids/hydrogeology at the assistant professor level. With the geochemistry position we hope to bring in a candidate who will support the petroleum and environmental parts of our program. With the geofluids position we hope to identify a candidate who will help expand and increase our strength in this area. The expectation is that we will have these two faculty in place by fall 2014. Finally 12 companies participated in our fall recruitment program. These companies included Chaparral, Chesapeake Energy, Concho, Denbury Resources, Devon Energy, EOG, Laredo Petroleum, Linn Energy, Noble Energy, QEP, Samson and SM Energy. We thank these industry partners for their continued support of our program. In addition students participated in the SEG Student Expo in Houston and in Rocky Mountain Rendezvous in Laramie, Wyoming. In summary, we had a great year, thanks to the hard work of the students and faculty and generous support of our alums.
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