“I started my higher-education career at the age of 16 with the decision to leave my home town of Sand Springs, OK in search of greater opportunities than those around me had found by the time they graduated high school. When I left home, I did not know what I wanted to do. I began researching careers in resource management, particularly with water resource management and environmental engineering. However, through visits to state universities I came to realize that opportunities to make a difference and start a career I pictured for myself in water resource management were not easily attained with a four year Bachelor’s degree.
My experiences at OSSM exposed me to the oil & gas business through programs sponsored by oil & gas companies and coursework in geosciences. During the time I was a student at OSSM, Oklahoma’s Oil & Gas Industry was experiencing a boom and the more people I talked to about being part of the industry the more excited about it I got!
The connections I made through OSSM allowed me to learn first-hand the challenges of a cyclical industry that has seen a resurgence from technological developments that allow for the utilization of unconventional resources such as shale oil and gas. I knew that if built on my academic foundation established at OSSM by spending the next four years working on a Petroleum Engineering degree, that I would be well-equipped to take on some of the challenges facing the oil and gas industry that continues to shape Oklahoma’s future.
OSSM prepared me for a petroleum engineering undergraduate program, helped me start my first semester of college as a sophomore and helped me have a higher GPA after that first semester. The recognition OSSM has within the oil & gas industry set me up for internship offers over my classmates as freshman and continued to factor into decisions for sophomore and junior internships. I’m proud to say I am one of only a handful of students at the University of Tulsa to start my senior year with a full-time job offer, even as the oil and gas industry is in the valley of a cycle! I do not think I could be in the position I am in now without my early exposure and connections to the oil & gas industry made possible through the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics.
~ Tyler Carter, OSSM Class of 2012 (Sand Springs, Charles Page H.S.), Production Engineer, Devon Energy (Aug 2016)
B.S. Petroleum Engineering, University of Tulsa, 2016
