The Petroleum Engineering Department at the Cullen College of Engineering has again been recognized for productive graduates and return on investment from its degrees, as it was named No. 6 on Steppingblocks' 2022 list of universities for petroleum engineers.
Steppingblocks is a data analysis firm headquartered in Atlanta. The company primarily collects and analysis four types of data – education, employment, demographic and institutional – for its rankings.
According to Steppingblocks, their methodology narrowed their dataset of 130 million people to 3,147 petroleum engineers, and then examined the top universities by volume when it came to employed petroleum engineers. The University of Houston ranked No. 6 via this methodology.
In the write-up, the average salary for petroleum engineers with a degree from UH was $124,630. Schlumberger, Chevron and ExxonMobil were identified as the three top employers of UH graduates, with the relevant skills of hydraulic fracturing, petrophysics and formation evaluation.
While the university has offered petroleum-based or focused courses dating back to the 1960s, the Petroleum Engineering Department was formally established with its own degree path in 2009, and turned out its first graduates in Spring 2013. A doctorate program was created in Spring 2015.
The department has grown since its creation, from six full-time faculty members to 15 as of Fall 2021, along with eight adjunct faculty and five support staff. For Fall 2021, 92 undergraduates, 43 Masters students and 54 doctoral students were enrolled. For the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 academic year, 57 degrees were awarded.