The University of Houston’s petroleum engineering undergraduate and graduate programs are experiencing a rise in enrollment, according to Tom Holley, director for the university’s Cullen College of Engineering.

In fall 2011, the petroleum engineering department had a total of 292 undergraduate and graduate students. That number jumped to 485 this fall as enrollment figures for graduate students increased. The university received approval for its petroleum engineering undergraduate program in 2008, adding to the existing master’s program.

Holley said that not only is the word getting out about the program, but the demand for petroleum engineers is extremely high. The surge in enrollment has caused a scramble for faculty, and students are filling classroom space quickly, giving staff reason to think about future needs.

“Students recognize that there are really good career opportunities in the petroleum industry,” Holley said. “Whereas some other sectors of our US economy are struggling, petroleum engineering is doing very well.”

Industry has played a huge role in the program’s success. ConocoPhillips has donated $2 million to the program and has pledged another $1 million in 2013. Others, such as Marathon Oil, have chipped in handsomely. Devon Energy has given donations for textbooks. The Gulf Coast Section of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) endowed a professorship. The Dallas Section of SPE has donated funds for UH scholarships.

Donations continue to come in for items such as equipment for teaching labs. Halliburton IT arm Landmark donated 20 computer workstations along with a full suite of software.

“Industry has been good, not only financially, but in hiring our students as interns and coming and supporting our student organizations,” Holley said. “All the way down the line, the success we are realizing could not have [been] done without industry’s support.”

Students have returned from summer internships from BP, Marathon, ConocoPhillips, and many others. “The reports I have received from various companies about our interns have been very good,” Holley said. “So I am comfortable that our students are competitive working with these excellent companies.”

The department also is making an effort to bring in more women from the industry to serve as guest lecturers and role models. There are two fundamental reasons why petroleum engineering is so male-dominated, Holley said. One is there is a well-documented trend that girls in middle school are shying away from math and science. The second is a lack of female role models. He is looking to find them as instructors and guest speakers.

While the program is attracting students and investment from companies, some students enrolled in the program are facing some obstacles – the subjects of reservoir petrophysics and reservoir fluids.

“We’re putting the very, very best instructors in front of these students,” Holley said. “None of the students are complaining about the quality of the instruction, but it was clear that the content is hard for the students to master. So we had to do more to help them.”

Holley has four teaching assistants plus himself each offering two office hours to tutor the 160 students every week. In addition, the College of Engineering has a program called PROMES (Program for Mastery in Engineering Success), which consists of workshops led by senior undergraduate students.

“This program is attracting a lot of students who may not be well prepared [for the curriculum], and those students may not succeed, or they will realize they need extra help and will invest the time to succeed,” said Holley. “All I can do is advise and help them. In the end, they have to learn the material. So it still remains to be seen how these students will fare.”

Holley pointed out that not only are companies looking to hire the best students, but they want to collaborate with the school to conduct research with faculty members. Initial research is focusing on low-permeability reservoirs such as shales.

“A certain level of support (from industry) was expected, but from my perspective, industry has gone way beyond what anyone could have imagined,” he said. “It has been very gratifying, and I am in awe of how much help we’ve had.”

As students continue to migrate to The Research Park to enter the program, Holley says he still has 600,000 sq ft of building space available that can be remodeled for classrooms and labs. Other energy-related disciplines likely will utilize some of this space. UH’s subsea engineering program is looking to co-locate with petroleum engineering.

“I have been up to see [Texas A&M’s] undergraduate teaching labs, and [we’ve] been to UT to see their facilities. Both schools have been very generous,” Holley said. “What we hope to accomplish is have undergraduates here go to graduate schools at A&M and UT or have their undergrads come to the master’s degree program here. It’s already happening because some graduates are working in Houston. Those schools did not have to help us but they did, and I am very pleased by it.”

Though UT and Texas A&M have long established relationships with oil and gas companies across the world, UH is located in the energy capital of the world.

“I don’t think [UT and Texas A&M] see us as a threat to their connections to industry,” Holley said. “And we don’t aspire to be a threat. The demand for petroleum engineers is very high. It does not look like the total of what they can produce and what we can produce, as well as the 20-some programs around the nation can put out, will meet global industry demand.”