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August, 2008 Dear Alumni and Friends, As I write this, we have begun fall 2008 classes. It's always a busy, but good time when the students are back on campus. The summer “break” is nice, but the campus is clearly more like a university should be with the students here. Speaking of students, we expect our enrollments to increase, both in geology & geophysics and petroleum & geological engineering. We have been preparing for this continued increase by upgrading our teaching lab facilities in both of the schools. This has included both space and equipment upgrades, which are made possible by the support of alumni, industry partners and other constituents. We have also been focused on increasing our faculty to address the higher enrollments, and are pleased that we have added four new faculty members (one in G&G and three in P&GE). And we are continuing our efforts to build our faculty with additional searches in both schools. In addition, we continue our search for the Director of the Oklahoma Geological Survey. With several searches still in progress, recruiting remains an important activity in the college. This year we will be announcing the first Mewbourne College of Earth and Energy Distinguished Alumni and Distinguished Service awards. The awards ceremony will be held in conjunction with the various advisory board meetings on November 21st, 2008. On the afternoon of November 21st (Friday), we are planning to hold a reception celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Oklahoma Geological Survey. More details regarding these events will be provided in the near future. I regret to announce we are losing John Ritz, our Assistant Dean of External Relations, this month as he returns to the petroleum engineering industry. He has been with OU development for 9 years and will be a great loss to the university. His work for the college and with the capital campaign has been essential to our success. On that note, we are pleased and thankful for the progress with the college capital campaign, and we continue to work to obtain the necessary funding to remodel the Sarkeys Energy Center Tower. We are very close to our goal, but have also had a bit of a “moving target” with inflation and some increased scope to address our higher enrollment. We will continue to work to get this part of our plans for the college accomplished as soon as possible. Overall, I believe we continue to make progress with our programs in the Mewbourne College of Earth & Energy. Again, I thank all of our alumni, industry partners and other constituents for their interest and support. I look forward to a successful 2008-2009 academic year.
Larry R. Grillot, Dean Mewbourne College of Earth & Energy |
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