PROWESS In the News

Wondering what your next career step will be as a professional geoscientist – and how to make your goals a reality? Here's your chance to get insights and answers from some successful experts who know.

For the past decade, educators have made a serious effort to get minority, female and non-traditional students involved in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Today that effort has intensified because of a combination of impetus from industry, research in geoscience education and societal changes.

The dictionary defines “prowess” as “great ability or skill.” Empowering women to develop those abilities and skills is a key goal of PROWESS, an AAPG committee dedicated to increasing the participation and advancement of women in earth sciences and the energy industry, with an emphasis on education, outreach, support, leadership development and retention.

Karen Waterbury, a science teacher at St. Mary’s Catholic School in Mount Carmel, Ill., has been named the 2016 American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) Foundation’s Teacher of the Year.

Times are tough for geoscientists. If we are still employed we feel lucky and asking for time and money to attend a conference can be perceived as a risky proposition. With the AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibit (ACE) coming to Calgary June 19-22 there is an opportunity to attend the largest gathering of petroleum geoscientists in the world with a great technical program at a low cost to your employer.

Network! Get inspired! Join other women of the earth sciences and the men who support them at the AAPG PROWESS-AWG-SEG Networking Reception before the AAPG Annual Convention & Exhibition begins.

Oil should be a blessing. It creates jobs and puts food on the table for millions of people. It fuels the power that drives industrial growth and development to move countries beyond oil and gas into a sustainable future. That is how the first female president of NAPE views the hydrocarbons she has been working to discover since beginning her career 24 years ago.

Yes, you can go home again. Just ask Cynthia B. Peterson, newly appointed dean and first woman of the College of Science, and professor of biochemistry at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where she graduated Magma Cum Laude in 1979 with a bachelor’s in biochemistry.