Annual Report 2007: FY July 1, 2006-June 30, 2007
Education Committee
The function of the Committee is to stimulate and guide a viable education program by setting goals, guidelines, and directions which satisfy changing needs in continuing education; by recommending subjects for the changing needs in continuing education; by recommending subjects for the Association’s catalog of short courses, schools, field seminars, training seminars, course note series, and related education activities; recommending speakers and program leaders and their fees; advising AAPG leadership on education matters, reviewing proposals relating to continuing education.
In FY 2006–2007, AAPG successfully conducted 17 field seminars and 12 stand-alone short courses. Included was a new GeoTour to Alaska which was sold out. For the last four years, AAPG has held an annual Winter Education Conference that consists of a “smorgasbord” of 12 practical application short courses held over one week in Houston. The conference in February 2007 received very high marks from the more than 150 participants. AAPG added a Fall Education Conference focused on Deepwater Exploration and Exploitation in September 2006, also in Houston, which drew a total of 78 participants. A second Fall Education Conference, co-sponsored by SEG, will be held in September 2007, on the theme of Stratigraphic Traps.
Annual field seminars continue to attract participants as well as generate demand for new offerings. For example, a new field seminar on Seismic Interpretation of Compressive Structures, conducted in Banff, Canada, by John Shaw, was added in 2007. In the past two years, AAPG has offered field courses in Southeast Asia, Italy, and Spain, as part of the globalization effort. The AAPG “Training Partners” program for in-house and society courses conducted two international programs this past year: one for the Peruvian Geological Society in November and one for the Indonesian Petroleum Association in May. Two programs were also conducted for Midland College this past FY, and two more are scheduled for Fall 2007. A large contract job for BP Trinidad is in the final stages of development and should be completed in the Summer 2007.
Several proposals were reviewed and/or approved for FY 2007–2008, including new short courses on fractures, quantification of risk, basic petroleum geology, and fault seals. New field seminar proposals on sequence stratigraphy of fluvial-deltaic deposits, fault characterization and flow behavior, and fluvial-deltaic/clastic shoreline depositional facies were also reviewed. Furthermore, AAPG is exploring co-sponsorship of courses with sister societies such as SPE and SEG, in order to meet demand for multidisciplinary continuing education.
In order to encourage and expedite new courses, a web-based system came online in 2006–2007, where ideas for short courses and/or field seminars can be submitted at the concept or full-proposal levels. The new system resulted in immediate use with the submittal of several proposals outlined above. The Education Committee also continues work on the matrix of AAPG courses with the long term goal of expanding and globalizing the curriculum. These goals and associated action plan have been outlined in an updated business-plan statement for the upcoming fiscal year, which the committee will discuss further at a November 2007 mid-year meeting to be held in Dallas.
Donna Anderson and Laura Wray, Co-Chairs
Julia Ericsson and Skip Rhodes, Co-Vice-Chairs
Committee members: Donna S. Anderson (co-chair), Richard Ball, Jim Blagg, Diane K. Brownlee, Gary P. Citron, Robert T. Clarke, James P. DiSiena, John Dolson, Martin K. Dubois, Julia B. Ericsson (co-vice-chair), Lawrence A. Febo, Anthony J. Grindrod, William B. Hansen, Ben D. Hare, William J. Haskett, Terry Joe Hutter, Priyanka Johri, John Lorenz, Susan Nash, Jeffrey A. Nunn, E.G. (Skip) Rhodes (co-vice-chair), Tim Sheehy, Lori L. Summa, MaryBeth Wegner, John Wickham, and Laura L. Wray (co-chair).