Shell has donated $6 million to the Texas A&M Engineering Program. The gift will be divided among the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station’s Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center, the Shell Engineering Foundations Laboratory and the Shell Transport Phenomena Laboratory.
“We are grateful for Shell’s generosity and support of our engineering program at Texas A&M,” said Dr. M. Katherine Banks, vice chancellor and dean of Texas A&M Engineering. “Shell’s investment in education is improving lives and empowering students to fulfill their dreams of becoming Aggie engineers.”
This was a great opportunity for Shell to embed safety principles, such as life-saving rules and process safety fundamentals, into students’ minds. “Shell’s deep value for people, our environment and our energy future really align with Texas A&M’s College of Engineering and the Mary Kay O’Connor program. My belief moving forward is that we will continue to partner to make our energy future better,” said Lori Fremin, general manager for surface engineering at Shell.
The College of Engineering will allocate funding for undergraduate research opportunities, graduate fellowships and future development of process safety programs. The Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center develops safer processes, equipment, procedures and management strategies to minimize losses within the processing industry. Researchers conduct studies pertaining to general issues of process safety as well as specific interests of the center’s consortium members.
The rest of the gift will go to name two important student laboratories within the Zachry Engineering Education Complex: the Engineering Foundations Laboratory and the Transport Phenomena Laboratory. The Engineering Foundations Laboratory is the largest student-serving experiential lab in the College of Engineering. It is a 35,000-square-foot experiential learning environment where the fundamental concepts of physics and engineering are taught. Every engineering student takes two courses in the Engineering Foundations Laboratory.
The Transport Phenomena Laboratory is a 2,000-square-foot laboratory designed to support the teaching of mass transport, thermal transport and thermal property measurement techniques across multiple disciplines in engineering.
Shell is an international energy company with around 84,000 employees in more than 70 countries. In the United States, Shell is a leading oil and natural gas producer, a recognized pioneer in deep-water exploration and production technology for the Gulf of Mexico, and one of America’s leading manufacturers and marketers of natural gas, petrochemicals and a range of oil products, including fuels and lubricants for home, transport and industrial use.