Cynthia and Mark W. Albers, senior vice president of Exxon Mobil Corp., have announced two gifts totaling $380,000 in support of petroleum engineering faculty and students at Texas A&M University.

“Texas A&M has long been recognized as having the leading petroleum engineering department in the country. It plays a vital role in developing the future engineers that industry needs to help meet the world’s energy needs,” said Mark Albers, Texas A&M Class of 1979.

The W. F. and Marilyn Albers Family Faculty Fellowship honors Albers’ parents (W. F. Albers, Class of 1947), and will support teaching, research, service and professional development of an outstanding scholar in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering.

The Mark W. Albers Scholarship will be presented for the first time in the Fall of 2008 to a full-time undergraduate in the department. Both awards are funded through the Texas A&M Foundation.

“We are grateful to Mark and Cynthia Albers for their generous support, which comes at an important time for our program. Enrollment is increasing, and we are attracting very high caliber faculty and students. Both of these gifts will help Texas A&M produce qualified engineers for the oil and gas industry,” said Dr. Stephen A. Holditch, department head and holder of the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation Chair in Petroleum Engineering.

Mark Albers was born in Canada while his father, a seismic crew chief, was based in Calgary. Subsequent moves in the operations to the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico eventually brought the family to Texas.

“My father not only kindled my interest in the oil and gas industry and Texas A&M engineering, but he and my mother also instilled a strong work ethic and faith-based values that shaped who I am today. They remain my heroes,” Albers said.

As a student at Texas A&M, Mark played Aggie football his freshman year. He was a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers student chapter, Phi Eta Sigma, Tau Beta Pi, Phi Kappa Phi and the Student Engineers Council. He served as vice president of Pi Epsilon Tau, student leader in Campus Crusade for Christ and treasurer of the Petroleum Engineering Club. He won the Engineering Faculty Senior Award, the highest honor accorded by the college of engineering.

After graduation in 1979 with a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering, Albers immediately joined Exxon. He worked a handful of years in the production fields of East Texas followed by supervisory and management assignments in Texas, New Jersey, Australia and Alaska.

He became president of ExxonMobil Development Company in 2004. He held that position for two and a half years before assuming his current role with responsibility for ExxonMobil’s worldwide project development, gas and power marketing, and upstream research activities.

Albers is a member of the Industry Advisory Committee to the Society of Petroleum Engineers, the Texas A&M Engineering Advisory Council, the Institution of Engineers Australia and the CEO Forum. He is vice chair of the United States Council for International Business and serves on its Board of Trustees and Executive Committee, NACME Board of Directors and the Board of Grace School of Theology.

He is married to Cynthia Albers, who graduated from Southern Methodist University in 1979 with a B.A. degree in education and an M.A. in counseling. They have four children and one grandchild who reside in Texas. Their oldest son graduated from Texas A&M with a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering, and their daughter currently studies petroleum engineering at Texas A&M.

The Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M ranks first in undergraduate programs and second in graduate programs among public universities in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report. The magazine ranks the university’s Dwight Look College of Engineering 8th nationally in graduate and 9th in undergraduate programs.

Written by: E. York, (979) 862-3567

Popularity: 13% [?]

Both comments and pings are currently closed.