Teachers travel to Morgantown to gain insight on oil and gas industry
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WBOY) — More than 40 science teachers from across three different states took a trip to Morgantown Thursday to learn how they can teach their students about the oil and gas industry.
The pilgrimage came as part of the Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia's 7th annual Science Teacher Workshop and teachers hope to take knowledge about the industry back with them in order to implement the subject into their curriculum.
Look out for 'Skittles of the bird world' in West Virginia this summer
'A lot of times we end up with too many folks who are at the twilight of their careers so we arte constantly trying to get younger and younger people to take interest in the science, the STEM programs, get interested in the oil and gas industry at a young age so they can study it and hopefully end up employed and stay in this region,' Jim Crews with Marathon Petroleum said.
Crews said that teachers who missed out on this year's workshop can still contact the Oil and Gas Association and get the training needed to implement the subject into their school's curriculum.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Yahoo
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.'
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Yahoo
Teachers travel to Morgantown to gain insight on oil and gas industry
MORGANTOWN, (WBOY) — More than 40 science teachers from across three different states took a trip to Morgantown Thursday to learn how they can teach their students about the oil and gas industry. The pilgrimage came as part of the Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia's 7th annual Science Teacher Workshop and teachers hope to take knowledge about the industry back with them in order to implement the subject into their curriculum. Look out for 'Skittles of the bird world' in West Virginia this summer 'A lot of times we end up with too many folks who are at the twilight of their careers so we arte constantly trying to get younger and younger people to take interest in the science, the STEM programs, get interested in the oil and gas industry at a young age so they can study it and hopefully end up employed and stay in this region,' Jim Crews with Marathon Petroleum said. Crews said that teachers who missed out on this year's workshop can still contact the Oil and Gas Association and get the training needed to implement the subject into their school's curriculum. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Yahoo
WVU students win second place in international Mars rover competition
MORGANTOWN, (WBOY) — A team of West Virginia University (WVU) students took home second place in an international competition over the weekend to build 'next generation' Mars rovers and test them in the field. This year, the University Rover Challenge (URC) brought together 114 teams from 15 countries to compete at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, which has terrain similar to the real Martian surface. According to a press release from WVU's Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, this is the third year in a row where WVU's Team Mountaineers' placed in the top two, following a second-place finish in 2024 and a first-place finish in 2023. Professor Yu Gu, the team's faculty advisor, said in the release that the team focused its efforts on 'refining last year's knowledge while fixing key issues.' 'This year, under the outstanding leadership of [Connor Mann] and [Jalen Beeman], the students represented WVU well against teams from around the world,' Gu said. 'This real-world engineering experience is what makes robotics competition an invaluable educational experience for students.' EXCLUSIVE: An up close look at the Green Bank Telescope The competition judges the performance of a team's rover through four different 'missions': science, delivery, equipment servicing and autonomous navigation. Teams performed tasks like analyzing soil for signs of microbial life, delivering samples and navigating difficult terrain. 'The most rewarding part was seeing our hard work and dedication pay off when stacked against the best in the world,' Jalen Beeman said, a team leader and computer science and electrical engineering student at WVU. 'Robotics is hard, so we've also been trying to lower the barrier for entry to the competition by open-sourcing our designs. At the competition, we had the chance to speak to several teams that used our designs which was very rewarding.' To read the full release on Team Mountaineers' finish at this year's URC competition, visit the WVU website, or go here to learn more about the University Rover Challenge. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
