• November 29, 2014
  • Mark LaCour
  • 4

Learn how we give something back, by volunteering our time to help teach STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) to a local high school. Plus see what happens when you give a bunch of engineers some free time and a little budget. If you want to learn more or volunteer yourself please click here.

 

Hey, folks. Let’s learn something new about the oil and gas industry.

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All right. Today, we’re going to talk about textbooks. Yes, textbooks. This is a high school science textbook. And the reason I have a textbook in my hand, so there’s something called STEM. It stands for Science Technology Engineering Mathematics and it’s a big deal in oil and gas industry. In fact, 76% of all oil and gas companies in the world believe that the shortage of STEM talents is a major business issue. So what are we doing to fix it? We’re going to go jump right in and [dip] some moneys and efforts and get this thing licked.

So, what’s happening is oil and gas industry and I mean everybody; Exxon, Chevron, Baker Hughes, Halliburton is putting resources and money both into universities to help teach STEM and also in high schools. And there’s organization called The Society of Petroleum Engineers which I am a member of and we’re actually partnered with local high schools and we take our membership and we go out and volunteer and help teach science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and that’s what I do.

Now, I do it because it’s a way for us as a company to give something back, but also it’s a way for me personally to give something back. So, I have a challenge for my viewers, I’d like to see you help me volunteer for STEM. It does not take a lot up of your time, we’ll throw a link up into the show notes, so at least check it out. It feels really good because what happens, you’re really making this world a better place. These kids will get onto college and get high paying satisfying successful jobs because of your efforts. How wonderful is that?

All right. So, we want to show you a little bit of what happens when you take some engineers and you give them some budget and a little bit of free time.

So, we go to this ISA Chili Cook-off and while we’re walking the exhibit we ran across this. This is a bunch of bright young engineers with too much time on their hand. They had built an automated chili dispenser system with an actuator. Watch this thing go. Now, let’s watch it again in slow motion. Crazy. Only in the oil and gas industry would you see something like this.

All right, folks. I hope this helps. I hope I hear from you. We’ll see you next time.

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