Support the HGS: Sponsorships and Scholarships
By Paul Britt, February 2024
We enjoyed our fiscal mid-year last month, and so far, the budget seems to be holding fast. Attendance at the dinners and luncheons has been good, including the Sherif Lecture and Legends Night. We held a Gala celebration for our 100th anniversary year and commemorated the year with a special edition of the Bulletin. We hosted the annual golf tournament, and revived the skeet shoot — now the sporting clays — which had a terrific turn out. We held the second holiday party at the Cadillac Bar, and it has now officially become an annual event. And of course, the outstanding Student Expo event in September is one of the only remaining student job fairs for geoscientists. The continuing education committee has held its usual dynamic programs under the guidance of a new chairman, Angel Callejon, who with co-chair Thom Tucker, led vibrant and engaging events.
In the second half of our year, we will see Scholarship Night, a field trip to the Guadelupe Mountains, the annual Shrimp Peel in April, more continuing education classes, and much more. It is shaping up to be a good year. And none of this would be possible without the support from our many sponsors, recognized on the Sponsorship List every month and on page 4 of this issue. I thank the sponsors for their generous support of our programs and events.
The Scholarship Night dinner honoring student recipients will be held on Monday, February 12. Student awardees, their parents, friends, and professors will attend the event. The HGS hosts the dinner for the Warren L. and Florence W. Calvert Memorial Scholarship Fund, chaired by Jeff Lund, and the HGS Undergraduate Foundation Fund, chaired by Joe Lynch. These HGS funds provide many scholarships to deserving graduate (Calvert) and undergraduate (Foundation) student applicants. Industry and individuals have provided generous sponsorship of this event, and the profit from these events is equally divided between the two scholarship funds.
The following is a brief synopsis for the Calvert Fund by Chairman Jeff Lund: “The Calvert Memorial Scholarship Fund was created in the mid 1970’s by HGS member Warren Calvert. His original grant was $8,000. The financial corpus of the fund has grown dramatically over time due to the inheritance of the Calvert estate when Warren’s son, William Calvert, passed away. In addition, the fund has grown from HGS Member donations, and HGS Past President John Tubb’s vision to hold a Scholarship Night dinner to honor scholarship recipients and solicit additional sponsorship donations. The event allows sponsors to meet many of the students and raises tens of thousands of dollars in additional funds. The fund is administered by a board of dedicated HGS volunteers
Calvert Fund scholarships will help support 18 graduate geoscience students in 2023-24, selected on the basis of faculty recommendations and financial need. In the 46 years since the first scholarship was granted in 1978, the Calvert Fund has awarded 269 scholarships to students at 31 universities with a total of $960,050 being awarded.”
The HGS Undergraduate Foundation Fund was started in 1984 to provide scholarships to deserving undergraduate geosciences majors. The Foundation has provided over $300,000 in scholarships since its inception.
Other student support comes in the form of summer internships at the Houston Natural Science Museum. The Engineering Council of Houston (ECH) committee and the Science and Engineering Fair (SEF) committee work cooperatively to support the yearly Science and Engineering Fair of Houston. Each year, several science fair participants are selected for HGS-sponsored summer internships. These internships are funded from the annual HGS budget and are subject to the financial ebbs and flows from year to year. I would like to see a program that has sponsors supporting these ECH and SEF events independently so they are not subject to budget effects. As of now, the ECH and SEF do not directly get any sponsor support.
I am sure many of you know about all of these activities that are the core of what HGS is about, but I find as I write about them, I re-learn about them and their significance to our mission. As I said earlier, so many things that we do for HGS members and the Houston geoscientific community in general are dependent on those generous sponsors, from large corporate ones donating thousands, to individual members donating hundreds, or even tens, of dollars, every year. I would again like to thank all of the sponsors, and I encourage all of you to recognize and thank them for their support as you enjoy the many HGS events this year.