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The American Association of Petroleum Geologists and the AAPG Foundation announce the L. Austin Weeks Undergraduate Grant Program for the 2007-08 school year. Funding is provided through a generous endowment gift from L. Austin Weeks to the AAPG Foundation.

The purpose of the grant is to support educational expenses of undergraduate geoscience students and their departments.

Nominated recipients'
names must be received
at AAPG headquarters by
December 15, 2007

Undergraduate earth science majors need to be members of Student Chapters. AAPG membership is not required.

Download a PDF of this announcement.

To obtain a form contact
Student Affairs Coordinator
Phone (US & Canada):
1-888-945-2274 ext. 653
Phone (all others):
1-918-560-2653

The disbursement of the grant for the current school year will consist of a maximum amount of $1,000 per qualified student chapter. Half of the calculated grant will be given to a qualified undergraduate student. The remaining is for the geoscience department, and should be used to support educational activities of the Student Chapter, i.e. for equipment, conferences, fieldtrips, etc.

Applications will be accepted for the L. Austin Weeks Undergraduate Grant from chapters who meet the following requirements, additional details of these requirements can be found in the AAPG Student Chapter Bylaws and Operations Manual:

A local committee consisting of not less than 3 individuals should determine the student recipient to be nominated. Recommended committee participants are:

1. The faculty advisor to the Student Chapter
2. The sponsoring society liaison
3. The Student Chapter President (if not a candidate)
4. The department chairman
5. One or more graduate teaching assistants

The chapter must - strictly enforced

• be in establishment for exactly one year from the date of deadline submission to qualify for grant (an official chapter since December 15, 2006)
• have at least 9 members who are AAPG student members, with member numbers*
• have at least one faculty sponsor, who maintains Active or Associate member status in AAPG*
• have an executive committee for the chapter (President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer)
• hold at least one meeting per month throughout the school year
• have filed at least two reports with AAPG Headquarters, one in December, and one at the end of the school year

* dues must be paid for 2007-08 fiscal year

Chapter and student recipients will be announced in January 2008. The grants to successful students and chapters are issued in U.S. dollars and the grant is paid separately between the chapter and the student, usually by a check drawn on a U.S. bank. However, in some countries delivery of grants can only be assured by bank wire transfer or other methods. Students selected to receive grants will be contacted by the AAPG Foundation concerning delivery of their grants. They must confirm that they can safely accept mail delivery of the grant payable by U.S. check, or they must provide all the banking information necessary for wire transfer of the grant, including the appropriate bank account number in the name of the student recipient or AAPG Student Chapter. A grant cannot be sent to a third party or wire transferred to a third party’s account. Students who are unable to accept grants by one of these methods will be ineligible, and should not apply.

If incorrect information has been provided during submission for the grant, i.e. check, wire transfer, or postal mailing address, a deadline date for the appeal on correction is May 1, 2008 for the 2008 program.

Mr. Weeks was born on the island of Curacao, March 25, 1925, the only child of Lewis G. and Una Austin Weeks. At age two weeks, he went to Venezuela to live, later to Argentina and Brazil. In 1933, he was sent to the Beacon Prep School in Sussex, England where he lived until 1939 when he went to live in Scarsdale, New York. He graduated from Scarsdale High School in 1942.

Austin graduated from Brown University in an accelerated program that put him through college in two years and eight months with a pre-med degree and an Ensign's commission in the USNR. Following this, he spent three months at Navy Communications School at Harvard University. During the war, his overseas duty took him first to the Mediterranean theatre, followed later by the Japanese occupation. Here he served on General Douglas MacArthur's Army-Navy communications staff in Tokyo (1945-46).

He did some post-graduate study at Brown University, then went to the University of Wisconsin where he earned an M.S. in industrial bacteriology (1947-49). During summers, he worked for Sinclair Wyoming Oil Co. in Casper as a geological assistant and researcher on magnetic properties of granites and arkoses.

In 1950, he received his M.A. in geology from Columbia University, his thesis being in structural geology.

From 1950-52, he lived in Salt Lake City, Utah and worked as a field geologist for General Petroleum Corp. He married Marta Sutton in August, 1951 and they moved to Durango, Colorado where Austin was field geologist for G. P. He became a district geologist in 1953 and until 1957 did field and research work in Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. Transferred to California in 1957, he did geological research at General Petroleum headquarters until 1960 when the company was reorganized and, along with many others, he was laid off.

Austin spent several years in real estate sales and investment before going back to work as a geological oceanographer for the Dept. of Commerce in Washington, D.C., as well as Lamont Geological Observatory. For the former, he was chief scientist for expeditions to the Andaman Islands for the International Indian Ocean Expedition in 1964 and also worked as a biologist for Columbia University studying plankton in the Antarctic in 1963. He consulted for the Israeli government with his father, L. G. Weeks, in 1963 and also was involved in other trips to the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean and the Pacific. In 1970-75, he started and was president of Weeks-Tator Consultants in Miami, Florida and in 1970-84 was involved as a vice-president and director of Weeks Petroleum Ltd. a Bermuda Corporation. When this company was raided on the London stock exchange in 1984, he retired. Since that time, he has been involved in volunteer photography in the Miami area, producing an annual calendar. He has also been involved in funding support for the University of Miami, the University of Wyoming, AAPG Foundation, the Miami Metrozoo and SPE.  Austin Weeks passed away at the age of 79 on February 27, 2006.