6 days ago
Oil and gas teacher workshop aims to end West Virginia 'brain drain'
MORGANTOWN — East Fairmont Middle School teacher Michael Leshko squats down at eye level with a contraption that contains boiling green mouthwash.
The mouthwash boils off some gases, which travel down a coil encased in glass. Leshko holds a bag of water over the piping, which cools the gas until it condenses again and drips out into a small plastic cup.
Leshko joked it was West Virginia's grand tradition of making moonshine, but in the case of the oil and gas teachers workshop he took part in Thursday, the tradition took on an entirely different significance.
'What we're doing is boiling and collecting the alcohol that is boiled off,' Leshko said. 'This is exactly the same way gasoline or other products are made from crude oil or from the liquid form of natural gas that is pumped out of the ground in West Virginia.'
The Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia held its 7th annual Science Teacher Workshop in Morgantown on Thursday. More than 40 teachers from across the state received curriculum materials and hands-on experience with eight training units that are related to the state's natural gas and oil industry.
Charlie Burd, president of the Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia, said the workshop gives teachers the latest details and information on the industry so they can take that information back to their students and incorporate it in class. Burd said today's students will someday be candidates for jobs within the oil and gas industry.
'Anytime we can get children or students more engaged in our industry at an earlier time, the better,' he said. 'The better off we are to having a willing and waiting workforce. Waiting till high school, when they're ready to graduate, isn't as good as trying to catch them early on in their late middle school or early high school stage.'
Burd said teachers learn all aspects of the industry at the workshop, from distribution, to drilling, well construction, environmental safety, storage, transmission and other essential parts of the field. Teachers also learn how natural gas is fractured and processed, and how heavier hydrocarbons such as propane, butane and isobutane are separated out and how those elements are used to create the synthetics that appear in everyday life.
There's also a geopolitical aspect to the education teachers bring back to their classrooms.
'We take natural gas, and we produce so much of it here in West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania area that we produce six times more than we use,' Burd said. 'What we don't use here, we ship out to other parts of the country or from a geopolitical standpoint, we liquefy and send it to other allies across the globe.'
Craig Whitaker, one of the education specialists at the event, said the ultimate goal of the workshop was to get children to understand how oil and gas reflect on the everyday objects they use and things they do, and how that connects back to careers. Whitaker added the oil and gas industry has openings across the educational spectrum, a degree in engineering isn't necessary for a job in the field.
'For the workforce of the future, kids need to know what jobs are out there and available for them that don't necessarily require a four-year degree or even a technical degree,' Whitaker said. 'Being able to make those connections in the classroom to get them to springboard them into careers within this industry, because — Pennsylvania, parts of Kentucky — you're looking at one of the largest oil and natural gas reserves in the entire world right now. So, these are up-and-coming jobs that could be sustained for a lifetime.'
Whitaker said the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics aspect is important because the industry is trying to get kids to apply the problem solving skills they learn in the classroom and take it to the field on their own.
Maureen Miller, a middle school teacher in Putnam County Schools, said the timing of the workshop is perfect because it happens at the end of the school year, and gives teachers plenty of time to develop lesson plans from the material they learn at the workshop. She's been to the workshop seven years in a row, and regularly incorporates what she learns at the workshop into her classroom.
'I created an entire project based upon all the activities that are done in this,' she said. 'They have to build a pipeline themselves. They have to work together to develop ways, if they were an oil and gas company. So, so they have to develop their company logo, their business cards. They have to research all the different types of jobs in there.'
The final project has students build a simulated pipeline that goes across Putnam County, which is the pipeline that exists now. A sample of oil or gas has to travel through the pipeline for students to be successful.
Miller said mastering these skills is important in order to create productive members of society, and it is important to make students aware of what opportunities the field provides.
'First of all, preventing brain drain from our state,' Miller said. 'These wonderful students, so they stay here in our state and contribute to our West Virginia society and be a productive citizen. That is ideally what we want to see happen.'
