Student chapters have been instrumental in promoting geoscience and providing opportunities for professional development and growth. Welcome to an interview with the AAPG Suez University Student Chapter which received recognition as the Outstanding Student Chapter in 2015 and 2018.

Tell us about the AAPG Suez Chapter. What is its history?

We are AAPG Suez University Student Chapter (AAPG SUSC); one of the most active student chapters in AAPG which was founded in 2008 at the Faculty of Petroleum and Mining Engineering, Suez University - Egypt. AAPG SUSC is considered as the best student activity in Suez University and was rewarded as the Outstanding Student Chapter in 2015. Also, we have been rewarded as the International Outstanding Student Chapter for this year.

We always promote student involvement in the work life related to Geology and Petroleum Engineering industry to guarantee achieving the vision of AAPG which is advancing the world of Petroleum Geoscience.

What are some of your activities?

Actually, we have a lot of activities that are valuable for various sectors such as:

• Minute Schools project that seeks to enhance high school students’ soft skills, technical knowledge and prepare them for not only the undergraduate but also the market zone by giving them sessions in their schools.
• Activation program in which we search for student activities from various universities in order to share our knowledge with them through a number of sessions.
• Charity program such as the orphanage visits, elderly care homes and special schools.
• AAPG Blog which includes articles or interviews and our Android application that includes courses of the university faculties and other useful features.
• Internal Development Programs that are supervised by the Vice President and include four sessions through three batches (English – Photoshop – Presentation – Personal Branding), in addition to Human Resources Development Program in which our HR Team is responsible for providing general sessions in a wide variety of critical skills.
• Oil and Gas Industry Conference (OGIC). OGIC is our technical conference held annually with the outstanding cooperation with Kuwait Energy Egypt, as they are the main sponsor. We invite services companies to participate as technical sponsors to strengthen the knowledge related to real-life operations.
• Es3a is our annual mega conference. We provide the students with the non-technical knowledge which is extremely important to start their career.
• Technical Week in which we target courses, training, field and yard trips for all five departments in the Faculty of Petroleum and Mining Engineering in different companies.
• PetroUp is a technical event that always updates us with the market. This year it will discuss new technologies in completion discipline. Internships opportunities based on a technical exam in the event.
• We hold technical schools as a winter training, in cooperation with technical companies for a specific duration inside the company's headquarters.

What is PetroPulse? How did it get started? What is its mission? What are its goals and objectives?

PetroPulse is our technical magazine which includes technical articles written by professional petroleum engineers and geologists in addition to interviews with leaders in the petroleum industry from all over the world to provide students with a huge amount of knowledge about Petroleum and Geology fields. Our annual magazine is usually sponsored by the largest petroleum corporations, distributed all over petroleum companies in Egypt and shared among engineers. Our main sponsor for this season is Kuwait Energy Egypt Petroleum Company.

We started working on PetroPulse in 2013 through its first issue which was general. Based on our conviction that the development has no limits, we continued working on PetroPulse and did our best to make it more valuable. A few days ago, we published its sixth issue which was associated with Geology and Reservoir Engineering. It included articles, researches, case studies and interviews with leading people in their specialties. Until now we published six issues and we would be grateful if you give them a look on our website: http://aapgsuez.net/Magazine.php

Our goals are to build a reputable magazine whose watchword is professionalism and to reach the maximum level of Geology and Petroleum knowledge through PetroPulse. We aim to increase the success of the magazine by selecting people with a high level of competence and expertise in the field of Geology and Reservoir Engineering in order to write and deliver their knowledge to the students. As well as expanding the publication base of the magazine in cooperation with other student activities and petroleum companies. In addition to that, we raise the magazine editors' skills to keep it professional and valuable magazine.

PetroPulse is not our only magazine. We also have Aspire, which is our non-technical magazine. It includes non-technical topics that mainly related to students' interests such as Marketing, English, Soft Skills, HR, and Freelancing. It is written in Arabic to be more available for all university students. We would be grateful if you see it through the link: http://aapgsuez.net/Aspire-Magazine.php

What are your future plans?

We will continue with the same activities and there are extra activities for this season:

• AAPG Suez will hold a two-day conference in the great city, in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. We are targeting powerful companies to participate in this great-expected event.
• Geological field trips will be held for two times in the most unique geological scenes in Egypt. This will help students to have awareness about the practical side of the study.
• Our academy team will submit a technical abstract for Egypt Petroleum Show, EGYPS. If we were selected, AAPG Suez will present in EGYPS.
• AAPG YouTech is an online technical webinar through our YouTube channel. YouTech sessions will be provided by powerful engineers from well-known companies in our field.

What makes you outstanding? What do you aspire to?

Our vision for the last few months was to make AAPG Suez a “Role Model”. We have worked hard to achieve it and be a role model for all student chapters, not only all over Egypt but also all over the world. We achieved that by reaching a high level of professionalism as an organization. Now, our target is to expand our professionalism and our vision for this season is to be “The Leading Community”. we are willing to achieve that by increasing our knowledge, enhancing our skills more and more, sharing our experience, methods, plans, techniques, and sharing our professionalism with other student communities.

The experience, AAPG members get through their work, make them feel different from any other student activities. This kind of experience helps them build their character and acquire a better understanding of real-life challenges.

Actually, every member at AAPG Suez has an unlimited wide of plans and dreams to reach the highest level of professionalism. So, we always organize a lot of ideas and plans that will help to be more special and prosperous than any other student chapter.