As of 3 April 2014, the SPE Board of Directors approved the nomination of A. Daniel Hill, head of the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University, as its first SPE Director for Academia. The creation of this position brings the total number of Board members to 29. Hill joins the 10 other Board nominees for 2015 (see the April 2014 issue of JPT, pp 58–62) slated for ratification at the June SPE Board meeting.
New Board Position Addresses SPE Strategic Plan Priority
“Capability development—to support industry in dealing with the big crew change”—is one of the four strategic priorities identified in SPE’s 2013–2017 Strategic Plan. Fulfilling this priority has a three-pronged focus—on universities, on accelerated and lifelong professional competency development, and on lifelong professional competency assessment.
With universities also facing a “crew change,” SPE’s plan addresses the need to help foster efforts to recruit, develop, and retain faculty. Ways to help achieve this could be through creating opportunities for, identifying, and attracting qualified industry professionals—including those transitioning to retirement. The plan also addresses the need both for helping accelerate technical and soft-skill competence of those new to the industry and for ongoing competency assessment tools companies and individuals can use to measure how successfully specific skills have been acquired.
The Board has been eager to ensure it has a member with the right expertise to appropriately address these aspects of the strategic plan. Therefore, at its March meeting the SPE Board approved a recommendation to add a new director position for academia to the SPE Board of Directors.
SPE Board of Directors Nominee: Director, Academia
A. Daniel Hill holds the Noble Endowed Chair and is head of the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University. Previously, he taught for 22 years at The University of Texas at Austin after spending 5 years in industry. Hill earned a BS degree from Texas A&M University and MS and PhD degrees from The University of Texas at Austin—all in chemical engineering. He is the author of the SPE monograph Production Logging: Theoretical and Interpretive Elements; coauthor of the textbook Petroleum Production Systems (1st and 2nd editions); coauthor of an SPE book Multilateral Wells; and author of five patents and more than 170 technical papers.
The recipient of several academic awards and honors, Hill served during 1988–89 as an SPE Distinguished Lecturer, lecturing on “Production Logging in Deviated Wells.” He has served on numerous SPE committees and was founding chair of the Austin SPE Section. In 1999, Hill was named an SPE Distinguished Member and in 2008 received the SPE Production and Operations Award. In 2012, he was one of two winners of the inaugural SPE PhD Pipeline Award, which recognizes faculty who have a proven track record in, or unique methods of, encouraging petroleum engineering students to enter academia.
Hill currently serves on the SPE Editorial Review Committee, the SPE Global Training Committee, and the SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference Program Committee. He is an expert in the areas of production engineering, well completions, well stimulation, production logging, and complex well performance (horizontal and multilateral wells), and has presented lectures and courses and consulted on these topics throughout the world.
