UH Cullen College of Engineering: Growth and Goals

US college engineering enrollments have declined since 2020, and now are half what they were in the mid-1980s. In fact, international engineering students greatly outnumber domestic students in the US, particularly in graduate programs. Fortunately, the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering has a new dean with a big vision and specific goals, which he shared at a recent Executive Leadership Board meeting. HFCW member Jeanne Perdue represented the UH Petroleum Engineering Advisory Board at that meeting. She took copious notes (of course), and will share some of the more interesting quotes and numbers on Cullen College’s path to improvement.

Jeanne Perdue grew up in LeRoy, NY (where Jell-O was invented), and earned a BS in Chemistry at State University of New York at Albany. She worked in the Texaco research labs as a chemist for 9 years and as a librarian for 4 years. She then became Senior Technology Editor for Hart’s E&P magazine and later launched the award-winning Upstream Technology magazine. She then spent 14 years as Technical Writer at Occidental Petroleum, where she taught her Oil Patch Writing class and hands-on Innovation Workshop. Since retiring in 2024, she teaches her writing class for PetroSkills and has published a book of poetry and a children’s book titled Dillon the Dawdler.

A past president of Houston Focus on Concerns of Women, Jeanne serves as Secretary of the University of Houston Petroleum Engineering Advisory Board and Chair of the HCC Petroleum Technology Advisory Board. She is President of the Federation of Houston Professional Women (FHPW) and serves on the FHPW Educational Foundation Board.