Chevron Corporation has made a multi-year commitment for AAPG student programs.
Chevron’s generous commitment of $1 million over four years – $250,000 per year – will support the Student Member Dues program and a new program to aid faculty sponsors of AAPG’s many Student Chapters around the world, and will help fund the AAPG and AAPG Foundation’s IBA program.
The commitment was announced by Steve Shirley, manager of Earth Science Technical Relations at Chevron Global Upstream and Gas in Houston.
Briefly put, Chevron’s commitment to AAPG’s Student focus will directly benefit AAPG members in two ways:
- For students, applicants for AAPG membership can choose to allow Chevron to pay their dues for the year – which is $10 (US).
- For faculty sponsors of an AAPG Student Chapter, Chevron will pay their AAPG dues.
“Chevron understands the importance of enabling students from around the world to benefit from AAPG membership and programs, as education opens the door of opportunity,” Shirley said. “As an industry, our future depends on attracting and retaining talent and leaders to take on the tremendous challenges of supplying energy to growing economies worldwide.”
“This continued and expanded partnership with Chevron will enable us to attract geoscience students into petroleum geoscience and ensure the availability of a future workforce,” said David Curtiss, AAPG and AAPG Foundation executive director.
“Chevron recognizes the need to cultivate students and support student programs to ensure they have exposure to geosciences information and data, education and are made aware of geoscience career opportunities,” said David Lange, AAPG deputy executive director.
Chevron’s announcement extends the company’s involvement with and support of AAPG Student activities – a commitment that started in late 2006.
The four-year Chevron commitment to the IBA also was hailed as a significant impact on the exciting and growing program.
“It is a great help and a reflection of confidence in the AAPG and AAPG Foundation IBA Program as we work on fundraising to have Chevron join a number of our other top sponsors in making such a commitment to the long term success of IBA,” said David Cook, who with Chuck Caughey is the current IBA Committee co-chair.
AAPG currently has 10,679 Student members and 272 Student chapters (110 in the United States, 162 internationally).
Student Sponsorship
Ever since Chevron first announced specific support for students in 2006 “it has been one of the most popular items to come up in conversation with students worldwide,” said Mike Mlynek, AAPG member services assistant manager who works directly with students and student programs.
He added that improvements have been made to the membership processing system to ensure speed and accuracy.
“During this past year AAPG has worked hard to eliminate manual data entry processes and mistakes due to handwritten applications,” Mlynek said. “The applications are now handled completely online, increasing the speed and ease in processing new AAPG Student memberships.”
Student applicants can pay online by credit card ($10) or choose the Chevron Sponsorship. Students will login – or create a new account if not already in AAPG’s system – and then complete the profile information.
Once the profile is complete the student will click on the “New Applications” link in the gold ribbon at the top of the page. The student applicant can then choose the proper membership form and complete the remaining details.
Applicants will receive an email for each step of the process that is completed: profile (new applicant only), submission of application form and acceptance into AAPG.
Faculty Support
The new, Chevron-sponsored Student Chapter Faculty Advisor Sponsorship Program is expected to help those who have become advisors and encourage other faculty members to get involved with the Chapters.
“I am extremely excited about this new program,” Mlynek said. “The faculty advisors are absolutely vital to having successful AAPG Student Chapters and in having a successful Student Chapter program overall – they serve as the glue in keeping Student Chapters active and engaged in AAPG and our many programs targeted at the student demographic.”
Mlynek sees many benefits to this program.
“Of course, the hope is that it will serve as a ‘perk’ to those tireless faculty members who serve AAPG in the role of a Chapter’s faculty advisor, but it will benefit AAPG and students as well,” he said.
“The Student Chapter Committee in the past few years has encountered a number of problems due to a lack of faculty advisors,” he said. “We ran into issues where we could not create new Student Chapters at a university because there was not an AAPG member or Associate with paid dues who could serve as the Chapter’s advisor, which is a requirement to forming a Chapter.”
There also have been active, “very engaged” Chapters that were unable to benefit from programs, such as the Student Chapter Book Gift or the L. Austin Weeks Grant, because the faculty advisor’s dues were unpaid.
“With Chevron lighting the torch on another successful program, we anticipate these issues will disappear,” Mlynek said.
“Chevron is proud to support the AAPG in engaging students and advisors through these programs,” Shirley added. “It is important for advancing earth science technology and developing the profession.