LSU Program in Applied Depositional Geosystems
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Update September 2007
LSU’s Program in Applied Depositional Geosystems (ADG) has entered its fourth year of operation. This report details the activities as of September 2007.
ADG has had a significant positive impact on both the quantity and quality of our graduate students because of the funding provided by our alumni and corporate partners. The program’s success has exceeded our expectations in terms of the quality of students participating in the program and the growing levels of cooperation and coordination between the Departments of Geology & Geophysics and Petroleum Engineering. In 2007, we officially established the ADG Advisory Council, and we look forward to working with our partners to further enhance and grow this program. The challenge is to maintain funding and to secure new commitments from corporations not currently participating. Even though enrollment will go up as potential students become more aware of the opportunities, our primary goal will always be to recruit and support the best students who have the most potential to make an impact in the profession. Recruiting of quality students in the near term will be very challenging. B.S. degrees in Geology have undergone a steady decline over the last twenty years from 12,000 in the mid-1980s to 4,000 last year. In addition, graduate programs are also competing with employers for B.S. graduates. Therefore, we will continue to seek additional numbers of stipends to help ensure that the best students attend LSU.
STUDENTS
Almost all of our graduate students receive some sort of financial support; therefore, the number of graduate students in the program is strongly tied to the amount of money available for student support. ADG funds have allowed us to increase the number of offers of support we made to graduate applicants in the last three years. In addition, there is stiff competition among universities for the very best students, and attractive packages that include significant stipends and research opportunities are critical to our recruiting success. ADG has been a great help in recruiting excellent students. The average undergraduate GPA of the seven ADG stipend recipients is 3.64 out of 4.0, and the average undergraduate GPA of all students in the ADG program is 3.58 out of 4.0.
A brief summary of each student is given below, and an * represents those receiving ADG stipends of $25,000 per year.
COMPLETED STUDENTS (in chronological order of when they started ADG)
Jill Hattier Womack* started the ADG program in August 2004. Jill worked with Mike Blum on “Modeling Late Quaternary conditions to estimate fluvial sediment supply to shelf-margin deltas along the northern Gulf of Mexico”. Jill defended her thesis in March and graduated with an M.S. degree in May. Jill has decided to stay on for a Ph.D. working with Mike Blum. A copy of Jill’s thesis is available in pdf format on the LSU website.
Angela Pell* started the ADG program in August 2005. She used well-log data (gamma ray, neutron, resistivity, density and sonic logs) and a 3-D seismic data set, donated by Shell Offshore, Inc. and TGS to map out “Evolution of an allochthonous salt system, Mars-Ursa Basin, northern Gulf of Mexico”. Angela’s thesis work was supervised by Jeff Nunn. Angela defended her thesis in May and graduated in August. Angela’s thesis work has been submitted for presentation at the AAPG meeting April 2008. Angela is working for Devon in Tulsa. A copy of Angela’s thesis is available in pdf format on the LSU website.
CONTINUING STUDENTS (in chronological order of when they started ADG)
Robin Wilcox Murray* started in the ADG program in January 2005. Robin is working with Mike Blum on a field-oriented project relating Quaternary sea level change and sedimentation in the northern Gulf of Mexico.
Chad Phillips* started the ADG program in August 2005. Chad is working with Jeff Nunn on hydrocarbon migration in faulted/fractured reservoirs. Marathon supplied Chad with 3D seismic data and well log data from East Texas for his thesis work. Chad gave a poster session on this thesis work at the AAPG meeting in April 2007. He interned this summer at Chevron in Houston. Chad plans to graduate in December 2007. He has accepted a full time position with Chevron.
Sam Gray started in the ADG program in August 2005. He is working with Phil Bart, and examining “The Middle Miocene Climate Shift on the Ross Sea Continental Shelf : A First Order Test of the Marine Oxygen Isotope Record”. Sam was President of the LSU AAPG Student Chapter for 2006-2007. Sam defended his thesis in June and plans to graduate in December 2007. Sam had originally accepted a position with Dominion. However, with the sell off of Dominion’s oil and gas assets, Sam is back in the job market.
Anna Marie Belanger started in the ADG program in August 2005. She is working with Jeff Hanor and Jeff Nunn on fluid flow in the Central North Slope Foreland Basin, Alaska. Anna Marie presented part of her thesis work in a poster session at the AAPG meeting in April 2007. She defended her thesis in June 2007 plans to graduate in December 2007. Anna Marie is now working for ConocoPhillips in her native Alaska.
Clint Edrington started in the ADG program in August 2005. He is working with Mike Blum on subsidence of the Louisiana Chenier Plain. He plans to graduate in May 2007.
Matthew Garvin* started in the ADG program in January 2006. Matt is working with Mike Blum on the Trinity River incised valley in East Texas. Matt started his field work in August 2006 and plans to do additional field work this fall. Matt did an internship with ExxonMobil this past summer. He plans to graduate in May 2008.
Corine Armstrong started in the ADG program in August 2006. She is working with Darrell Henry on “Provenance of Santa Fe Formation sediments, western U.S.” Corine received support from Sigma Xi and Halliburton for her thesis research. She had an internship with Devon this past summer.
Rhonika Robinson started in the ADG program in August 2006. She is planning to work with Phil Bart on modeling of the interplay between tectonics and surface processes. Rhonika had an internship with ConocoPhillips this past summer.
Eric Prokocki started in the ADG program in August 2006. He is working on the Holocene Mississippi River Avulsion History:Yazoo Basin, Mississippi with Mike Blum. Eric has received support from GSA and Halliburton for his thesis research. Eric had an internship with Chevron this past summer.
Vince Adams started at LSU in August 2006 in the Geoscience Alliance to Enhance Minority Participation (GAEMP) program funded by NSF. He also indicated an interest in following the ADG curriculum. Vince is working with Phil Bart on “Do deep-sea sedimentary cycles at ODP Leg 178 drift sites record Antarctic Peninsula Ice Sheet grounding events?” Vince gave a presentation on this work at the December AGU meeting.
NEW STUDENTS
Kyle Metz* received his B.S. degree at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas and started as an ADG assistant in August 2007. He has not made a final decision on a thesis topic or adviser at this time. He spent the summer working in Bill Blanford’s laboratory at LSU and went with Bill to Jordan to work on a water filtration project.
Catherine Sutera* received her B.S. degree in Biology with a minor in Geology from Louisiana State University. Catherine plans to work with Mike Blum on a field oriented project on sedimentation in the northern Gulf of Mexico.
Andrew Steen received his B.S. degree from Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. He attended the Summer of Applied Geophysical Experience (SAGE) program this summer which is funded by NSF/DOE and a consortium of companies. Andrew plans to work with Jeff Nunn on a 3D or 4D seismic interpretation project.
RECRUITING
As documented above, the ADG program has been successful in recruiting high quality students from a variety of schools. In 2004, we developed a pamphlet describing the ADG program (updated in 2005). This information was distributed along with a poster describing our department to over 200 schools throughout the country. We are attempting to broaden our applicant pool, recruit additional candidates from schools or regions that have not traditionally applied to LSU, especially smaller liberal arts colleges. Our goal is to attract the best students from around the country to LSU. For example, one of our ADG stipend recipients, Angela Pell, came from a four faculty member department at Millsaps College in Mississippi. Another ADG participant, Sam Gray, is from Colby College in Maine. We are very pleased to have a second ADG student from Texas Tech and a third well qualified candidate from Texas Tech has contacted us about applying to ADG for January 2008. In order to improve our yield of candidates, we initiated a group visit by ADG stipend candidates as well as other top tier candidates in 2005. Of the seven candidates who visited, six committed to LSU. Three out of four of the 2005-2006 ADG stipends offers were accepted. Two of three 2006-2007 ADG stipends offers were accepted. As noted above, recruiting at least in the short term is going to be a challenge. The number of B.S. candidates continues to decline nationwide and we are starting to see competition from companies for students. We lost two potential ADG students to the job market this spring.
FUNDING
Since its inception in 2004, $390,000 has been donated from alumni and industry partners. While the majority of the money has been used to support M.S. students as ADG assistants, funds have also been used for student travel and speaker programs. An additional $130,000 has been pledged for the 2007-2008 academic year. Current ADG sponsors are Clarence P. Cazalot, Jr., Shell, Chevron, Dominion, and Marathon. Funding requests are pending with EnCana and Devon.
NEW COURSES & ENHANCED INTERACTIONS with PETROLEUM ENGINEERING
Several new courses have been developed as part of the ADG curriculum. Brooks Ellwood developed a new course in stratigraphy, which was first taught in Fall 2004. Jeff Nunn of Geology & Geophysics and Steve Sears of Petroleum Engineering developed a new graduate course in Reservoir Characterization, which was first offered in the Fall Semester of 2005. This class had 7 petroleum engineering students and 8 geology students. Student evaluations were generally favorable but it was clear that we have additional work to do in order to make this class appeal to both geologists and engineers. Zaki Bassinoui, Dean of the College of Engineering, is teaching Formation Evaluation this fall especially for ADG students. Phil Bart offered a graduate class in Subsurface Mapping in the spring semester 2007. Finally, while it is not directly related to ADG, the greater cooperation between Geology & Geophysics and Petroleum Engineering has been extended to the undergraduate level. Petroleum Engineering students currently take the same sedimentology and structural geology courses as geology majors.
OUTSIDE SPEAKERS
The ADG program has brought in guest speakers to the department that in 2006-07 have included Mike Liebelt & Scott Szalkowski (Marathon), Mark Rowan (Rowan and Associates), Charles Oliver (Devon), Rebecca Latimer (Chevron), Eric Zimmerman (Dominion), and Chester Young (BakerHughes). Training on Landmark also has been offered to all faculty and students through the ADG program.
ADVISORY COUNCIL MEETING
ADG held its first Advisory Council meeting on January 10, 2007. Comments were overall very positive in terms of the appropriateness of the curriculum and the quality of the research being conducted by students. The Council recommended that ADG be expanded to 24 students if additional funding can be acquired. The Council also asked that the Advisory Council meeting be expanded to allow more time for students to present and discuss their research. Finally, the Council recommended that ADG and industry sponsors develop greater research collaborations in terms of soliciting potential thesis projects from within their companies.
ADG will hold its second advisory council meeting in mid-January 2008 to allow sponsors to meet ADG students and hear about their research. We also would like to hear comments about the ADG program and discuss plans for the future. We will be in touch later in the fall to find out who from our corporate supporters will serve serve as representative(s) and to provide them with a preliminary agenda for the meeting.
For additional information, contact Jeff Nunn at gljeff@lsu.edu
or 225-578-0081,
Laurie Anderson at glande@lsu.edu
or 225-578-2153.
