This summer, Wyoming high school students will have the opportunity to experience some of UW’s energy program through a new course offered at this year’s Summer High School Institute.
100 students are selected annually from Wyoming schools to stay on campus for three weeks in June to get a head start on the college life. Dr. Tawfik Elshehabi, an assistant lecturer from Egypt who earned his Ph.D in petroleum engineering at West Virginia University, stepped up to offer students the chance to learn about the industry.
“The summer program has been going for a long time, but Petroleum Engineering never participated–when I asked they said they didn’t have an instructor who was interested in offering this course,” Elshehabi said. “They always participate with a robotics class, some art classes, but it’s the first time to have an energy class.”
Elshehabi’s interest in the academic side of the energy industry has its roots in sharing his expertise with his own children.
“I used to teach them and try to simplify engineering and science to them, so I found in myself the ability to simplify big engineering facts in very small non-technical words,” Elshehabi said. “I wanted to invest in this.”
Since his arrival at UW last fall, Elshehabi has invited kids from as early as the fourth grade on field trips to UW to experience its laboratories and drilling rig simulator.
“We try to reach out early to students, at least to explain to them what is the potential of Wyoming energy,” Elshehabi said. “They need to know, ‘what this is, why do we have it’ – and what is the potential for them to be engineers. It’s worked very well, the feedback was very positive.”
For the summer institute, Elshehabi will present to students an overview of Wyoming energy, the process of extracting resources and its importance to the state, the nation and the world—and the improving prospects of the energy economy in Wyoming after falling output and revenues in recent years. The state remains the second most productive in terms of overall energy and has great potential, Elshehabi says.
“When I heard about the summer high school institute, we said, let’s transfer this to students so they can have a better idea about Wyoming energy and they can decide in the future if they want to continue the legacy we have here in Wyoming,” Elshehabi said. “We always find new resources—when we started, we were producing from only conventional reservoirs—sandstone rock, limestone rock.
Then in the last decade, we [found] a lot of oil and gas in shale formations. This actually helps the whole U.S., to have this boom now.”
Elshehabi’s teaching role at UW is focused on the sophisticated, full-sized drilling rig simulator in the UW School of Energy Resources. Ryan Carlson, a project coordinator at the School of Energy Resources, is well familiar with the simulator’s value for students at the university, as well as those visiting.
“As engineers, we’re problem-solvers,” Carlson said. “Its really beneficial for students and it was really beneficial to me when I used it.”
Chad Wathen, a senior student in the petroleum engineering program, is looking forward to new students having a closer perspective of the industry.
“It’s always important to get high-school students actively learning about the oil field, and the oil and gas industry,” Wathen said. “In some areas, it does have a negative light—it’s really important to understand what actually goes on in the field. We’re doing stuff to improve not only society but each individual worker’s family life—that includes health, safety and the environment. The oil and gas industry is not something that’s against us, it’s for us.”
Applications for 2018’s Summer High School Institute are no longer open, though the event will come around next summer for qualified high school students interested in a wide-ranging sample of life at UW.
