• Mud bugs, mud weights; boiling water, offshore waters. There’s a percolating poetry to a certain local crawfish boil that results in scholarships supporting future energy-industry engineers.
  

ABOUT 8,000 PEOPLE attended last year's crawfish boil to get in sync with that poetry by eating mud bugs (better known as crawfish), discussing mud weights (better known as drilling particulars), and raising money for engineering scholarships at the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering.

The occasion was the opening of the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston, and the hosts were the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the University of Houston (UH).

Scholarships

In 2008, BP stepped forward as the first underwriter of the event in its 20th year of the ASME/UH Crawfish Boil. In that role at the crawfish boil, BP representatives Gabriel Cuadra and Lizie Nguyen presented the ASME with a check for $50,000. That money (the investment) is destined for scholarships and other student-retention efforts at the UH Cullen College of Engineering, one of the top three colleges from which BP recruits its engineers.

The donation is part of the three-year, $750,000 Hayward/Malone Grant to 12 colleges that BP initiated in 2008. “The grant gives $250,000 each year for three years to ‘plant the seed’ encouraging students to select majors in engineering, science and business,” said LaTonya Tichavsky, U.S. Graduate Resourcing.

“Gabriel Cuadra, BP’s Compliance manager and executive sponsor for UH, works with university leaders to use the funds for the greatest campus and individual impact,” Tichavsky says. “In addition to funding individual scholarships, some of the money goes to development programs, such as the Program for Mastery in Engineering Studies.”

Recruiting effort

“The crawfish boil is a great opportunity for us to network with UH engineering students as part of our recruitment effort,” said Lizie Nguyen, flow assurance project engineer and the lead recruiting coordinator for BP at UH. “Our goal is to encourage them to continue studying engineering and to consider BP when it’s time to look for a job.”

“Our goal is to promote the BP name on campus, especially to engineering students,” says Nguyen. “We hope to attract our scholarship recipients to either our internship-interview list or to our permanent-hire interview slots during their senior year.”

Next Event: May 2, 2010