Outstanding professional records, commitment to education, public service and other significant contributions have earned five University of Texas at Austin alumni the honor of Distinguished Graduate of the College of Engineering. Only five of the University's more than 50,000 engineering alumni earned the honor this year.
The 2005 distinguished graduates are W.E. Findley, Jr., an oil service industry executive; Dr. David Fowler, a professor of architectural engineering at the University; Jeffery D. Hildebrand, an oil industry consultant; Jack P. Randall, a consultant for oil industry mergers and acquisitions; and Glenn E. Taylor, a retired chemical engineer.
They were honored by the College’s Engineering Foundation Advisory Council at the fall commencement ceremonies on Dec. 9. A photograph of the distinguished graduates is available on the College of Engineering Web site.
W.E. Findley Jr. earned a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering from the University after serving for two years in World War II as a Naval engineering officer. He began his career as a sales and equipment engineer for oilfield processing equipment, working for two years in Alice, Texas.
In 1949 he founded the Findley Engineering Service Company in Alice, starting with a portable laboratory truck that traveled to gas-condensate well sites and helped determine the best separation conditions for the wells. Findley promised to stick to ethical business practices while providing service, equipment and personnel to companies in the oil industry. In 1962 the company changed names to FESCO, Ltd.
Today, as FESCO prepares to celebrate its 56th anniversary with Findley still at the helm, the company employs 470 people with 12 Texas offices, one Louisiana office and one Oklahoma office. FESCO offers a variety of petroleum engineering services and laboratory work on oil and gas wells. The company advises oil and gas companies in determining the optimum test designs, testing equipment, and the economic feasibility and safety of testing projects. FESCO has over 1,300 clients, including small independent gas and oil companies as well as global corporations such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP.
Findley has been a registered professional engineer in Texas for 50 years, and is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. In his community, Findley currently serves as president of the Alice Water Authority, which changed the name of Lake Alice to Lake Findley in his honor.
Findley has done his part to keep the Longhorn tradition alive and well. He is a life member of Friends of Alec, an alumni group that supports Engineering scholarships and programming. In addition, his three children from his first marriage, as well as four step children from his second marriage, all attended the University.
As a distinguished architectural engineer, Dr. David Fowler has made numerous contributions to his profession and the educational development of young engineers.
Fowler began his education at The University of Texas at Austin, earning a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in architectural engineering. He joined the College’s engineering faculty in 1964 after completing a civil engineering doctorate at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Since then, he has earned an international reputation for developing stronger, more durable materials for bridges, and for exemplary leadership. In 1998 he earned the engineering profession’s highest honor when elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for his “development and application of concrete-polymer materials.”
Fowler holds the Joe J. King Chair in Engineering and the T. U. Taylor Professorship, and directs the university’s International Center for Aggregates Research. He teaches undergraduates and graduates about materials, concrete repair, forensic engineering and the design of concrete structures, and has received outstanding teacher awards on campus, including selection in 2000 to join the university’s Academy of Distinguished Teachers.
In research, his expertise includes the use of polymer concretes for repair applications, the use of concrete sealers, and the use of intelligent polymer concrete. He also has served as a consultant to federal and state agencies, construction companies and others. That consulting work has involved designing and building bridges and buildings, and investigating structure failures.
Fowler’s professional activities include serving on the American Concrete Institute’s board of directors and as chair of institute committees. Among his professional honors are being named the first non-Russian to become an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Engineering, and serving as first president of the International Congress on Polymers in Concrete.
At the university, Fowler chairs the Intercollegiate Athletics Council for Men, and is a member of the Faculty Advisory Building Committee. He co-chaired the D.K. Royal Memorial Stadium expansion and renovation effort. He also has served as chairman of the College’s Awards Committee, and is a Friend of Alec.
Jeffery D. Hildebrand’s entrepreneurial acumen became evident when he began running his own oil and gas production company three years after completing a master’s degree in petroleum engineering from The University of Texas at Austin.
His ability to tackle challenges was already evident when he served as a technical examiner for the Texas Railroad Commission while completing his graduate degree.
After graduate school, Hildebrand became a petroleum geologist and engineer for The Dan A. Hughes Co., an independent oil and gas company in Beeville, Texas. He continued this career focus after returning to his home city of Houston, where he joined the American Energy Capital Corp. in 1988. The company was sold the year he joined their exploration team, which prompted him to consider starting a business.
After brief work as an oil and gas consultant, Hildebrand founded Hilcorp Energy Co. in Houston. He serves as president and chief executive officer for the company, which has 375 employees and interests in more than 3,000 wells. The company is a major oil and gas producer, and has a venture-capital subsidiary that invests in real estate and businesses.
Professionally, Hildebrand is a member of organizations that include the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the Society of Petroleum Engineers, the Houston Geological Society, the Louisiana Independent Oil and Gas Association, and the Texas Independent Petroleum Royalty Owners Association. He also is an active member of the Catholic Church who participates in Christian-based educational and outreach efforts for people in need.
He remains actively involved in fundraising for The University of Texas at Austin through the Chair Longhorns for Excellence in and Advancement of Petroleum Engineering Education. He also is a Friend of Alec who has served on the External Advisory Committee for the College’s Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering. As a member of that committee for two years, Hildebrand helped initiate and find corporate support for the department’s Workforce Initiative to raise scholarship funds to support undergraduate students.
Jack P. Randall earned bachelor's and master's degrees in civil engineering from The University of Texas at Austin in the 1970s. After graduation he worked for Amoco for 14 years, serving in various engineering, operations, and management positions. When he resigned to found his own company, he was Amoco's manager of mergers and acquisitions.
In 1989 Randall, along with Ken Dewey and an administrative assistant, formed Randall & Dewey Inc. to provide the oil industry with new approaches and methods to mergers and acquisitions. The advisory firm significantly transformed the mergers and acquisitions business in oil and gas and is recognized as having pioneered the transactions business as it is now conducted worldwide.
Since 1989 the firm has grown to include more than 100 engineers, geoscientists, and finance professionals with offices in the United States, Canada, Europe and Africa. Randall & Dewey services has an international client base that includes multi-national and major integrated oil companies, national oil companies, as well as public and private independent oil companies. The firm's services have expanded beyond mergers and acquisitions to include strategic consulting, asset management, corporate finance and investment banking. Randall served as president and chief executive officer of the firm for 15 years. In early 2005, a New York based investment bank, Jefferies & Company, acquired Randall & Dewey.
In addition to his current duties at the firm, Randall serves on the board of directors of XTO Energy (NYSE) and the Caymus Energy Fund. He serves the university as a member of the Board of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, the UT Chancellor's Council, and is the current chair of the Engineering Foundation Advisory Council.
Randall, a born-and-raised Austinite, comes from a long line of Longhorn engineers, and his own family is continuing the tradition. His father, brother and daughter are engineering graduates from the university, and his son is a sophomore mechanical engineering student. As a life member of Friends of Alec, Randall supports an endowment to fund engineering scholarships and programming.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, Glenn E. Taylor started his multi-faceted career at Diamond Alkali. He spent 20 years with the company, which later became Diamond Shamrock Corp. During those years, he served in process engineering and development, as an operations supervisor, a technical manager, a plant manager, and eventually a division operations manager. Five of those years were spent on assignment in Colombia, South America, and in Mexico as part of the International Division.
In the late 1970s, Taylor applied his diverse expertise in leading a privately owned instrumentation company, where he served as president for four years. He then joined Engelhard Corp. in New Jersey as director of manufacturing in the Pigments Division, eventually assuming overall responsibility for that business unit.
After five years in that position, Taylor became the corporation’s vice president of joint ventures and manufacturing services. He was responsible for purchasing, environmental, health, and safety aspects of manufacturing, and for joint ventures the company pursued in Japan and Korea. His leadership skills were also tapped when he oversaw a team that developed a corporate-wide strategy for the company’s business in Asia and the Pacific.
He retired from Engelhard in 1996, but his strong work ethic and broad knowledge led him to assume the position of executive director of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). As director for five years, Taylor implemented a new strategic plan that involved the first major governance change in 30 years. He played an instrumental role in forming the North American Alliance of Chemical Engineers and the World Chemical Engineering Council. And he whetted his appetite for educating young engineers by teaching a course at the University of Virginia on topics that included communications, teams, ethics and intellectual property.
That interest in education continues to this day, while the transplanted Texan who lives in New Jersey helps operate a school for underprivileged children in Honduras, and volunteers with the AIChE and his church. He also maintains an active interest in Longhorn Sports and the College of Engineering as a member of the Engineering Foundation Advisory Committee and in Friends of Alec.
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About UT's Cockrell School of Engineering:
The University of Texas at Austin's Cockrell School of Engineering ranks among the top six public engineering schools in the United States. With the nation's fourth highest number of faculty elected members of the National Academy of Engineering, the School's more than 7,000 students gain exposure to the nation's finest engineering practitioners. Appropriately, the School's logo, an embellished checkmark used by the first UT engineering dean to denote high quality student work, is the nation's oldest quality symbol. The School maintains a Web site at http://www.engr.utexas.edu