Offshore in depth

What started as a subsea engineering graduate program at the University of Houston (UH) has grown into an international alliance, which combines subsea education with subsea research among six of the world’s leading, subsea engineering universities.

The Global Subsea University Alliance was conceived by Matthew Franchek, founding director of the University of Houston Subsea Engineering Program (UHSEP); the Singapore Economic Development Board; and Prof Loh Wai Lam, at the National University of Singapore. And, although Dr. Franchek has guided and built the UHSEP, which has both an education and research focus, the original idea was brought to him by an industry professional.

Dr. Franchek came to UH in 2002 from Purdue University, where he had been a full professor in mechanical engineering. While at Purdue, he initiated and led two industry-supported interdisciplinary research programs—automotive research and electro-hydraulic research. From 2002 to 2009, he served as mechanical engineering chair at UH while simultaneously initiating UH’s biomedical engineering undergraduate program.

“In 2009, I was leading an outreach program for the University of Houston, for the Cullen College of Engineering, and one of its goals was to have an economic impact, both within Houston and within the state. I was meeting with Randy Wester (director, Global Subsea Engineering) of FMC Technologies as part of the outreach program, and he said, ‘How about starting a graduate program in subsea engineering?’”

“So we talked about it,” continues Wester, “and I met with a lot of other companies in the industry that are great ambassadors for UH and are our stakeholders, and they were excited about it. Finally, after a meeting with the dean of the engineering college, we decided to implement subsea engineering.” That led to a lot of conversations, Franchek says, along with benchmarking internationally, meeting with executives and industry leaders—“people that we think are gurus in the various areas of subsea discipline. We eventually put together what I believe is the most comprehensive subsea engineering program in the world.”

Subsea alliance. The educational side of the equation didn’t completely fulfill the vision. So, Dr. Franchek and his UH colleagues, working with the National University of Singapore and others, put together what they now have launched as the Global Subsea University Alliance (GSUA). It involves several key universities that they identified as world leaders: National University of Singapore; University of Aberdeen (Scotland); Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; Curtin University (Australia); Bergen University College (Norway); and University of Houston.

The program first wanted to make its curriculum international, meaning that a student could take a course at the Federal University, and it would transfer to UH. The next thing Franchek wanted was a global institute for subsea engineering research, a program that would spread among all the institutions. “We’re putting this together now with the other universities,” he explains, “and from now on, it will be one-stop shopping. It will be education, and it will be research. The players we have picked out were not by accident. We all have the same oil and gas companies within a 20-to-25-mile radius of the universities.”

Franchek says that he’d like to make sure that no matter how global your business is, you’ll have a university near you that advocates high standards within a subsea engineering curriculum.

The industry has supported the program from the beginning, Franchek says. “We have some very great supporters. One that has been very helpful to us is National Oilwell Varco. They not only supported research projects, but also gave us a high-performance computing center.”

The NOV leadership has significantly advanced the subsea engineering program “in tremendous ways,” Franchek says. “I have to recognize them and their leadership. We’re also grateful to the American Bureau of Shipping, KBR, FMC Technologies, GE Oil and Gas, and Transocean, among many others. There are others that we are talking with right now. I think that by the end of summer, you’re going to see an extremely long list.”

In building the world-class faculty, Dr. Franchek went to the industry, itself. During his initial interviews about building the curriculum, he spoke with roughly 200 companies, large and small, throughout the industry. At some point, he asked, who were the best authorities on whatever segment was under discussion. They’d mention someone by name, and he’d add that to his list. Some names would pop up more often than others.

“I’d go over and meet them, and look at their credentials—are they someone I’d like to listen to in the evening during a weeknight, are they charismatic to keep me engaged, will they make the commitment? I did a lot of one-on-one evaluation.”

Education and networking. A couple of strengths of the program, Franchek says—and why people might want to consider this—is that beyond learning from the world leaders, veterans and innovators of subsea engineering, both on the drilling and production side, it’s a great chance to network.

“You’re sitting amongst your contemporaries. My demographics show that about 50% in a class are people already working in the industry. And 50% are new workforce development. This is a program that’s administered by the university, but it’s really for industry… In the future, I think that exchange programs among the alliance partners, our outreach, and our research facilities, will give all of the students, the international education they need, as well as giving companies an easy point of connection to education and research.