There's never been a better time to pursue a graduate degree in Petroleum Engineering. No one reading this webpage needs to be reminded about the rising gas prices, increased political instability, and decreasing access to new oil reserves that plague the petroleum industry. What most people don't realize is that for every barrell of oil we take from the ground approximately three more remain, inaccessable to current technologies.
At the University of Kansas, our nationally recognized program focuses on extracting that remaining 75%.
Our department offers the M.S. degree in petroleum engineering and the PhD degree in chemical and petroleum engineering. The M.S. program requires 21 hours of courses, including five core courses and two elective courses. A total of 30 hours is required for the degree which includes 3 hours of seminar and 6 hours of research. A thesis is required. Students who do not have a petroleum engineering B.S. degree are required to take remedial courses in petroleum engineering and geology. A list of remedial courses is available on the CPE website. A variety of research projects are available, many under the Tertiary Oil Recovery Project, a major state funded research program at the University of Kansas. The TORP website www.torp.ku.edu contains descriptions of current and previous research projects.
The PhD program requires completion of 45 credit hours beyond the M.S. degree. Required are 18 hours of course work beyond the M.S. requirements, including 3 doctoral level courses in our department, two graduate courses related to the doctoral research project which may be taken in other departments at KU and preparation for the comprehensive examination. Doctoral students are required to pass comprehensive examinations based on MS core courses or granted exemption based on grades received in MS core courses before becoming a PhD aspirant. PhD aspirants become PhD candidates after completing the comprehensive examination. The comprehensive examination is scheduled after the majority of the course work is completed.
At the present time, research projects are in progress in the following areas:
Applications Graduate Studies are available in .pdf format. To download the application, you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. If you do not have Acrobat Reader, you may click "Get Acrobat Reader" to download it for free from the Adobe website:
If you have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer, you may click one of the links below and your browser will automatically lauch the Reader. Once open, you will see the application, and may save it to disk or print it immediately on a local printer.
To apply online, please go to the Graduate School Application Website
For additional information on Graduate Programs Admissions, please see the Graduate Programs Website.
In addition to several research and teaching assistantships available for all graduate students (U.S. and international), the Chemical & Petroleum Engineering Department has a number of fellowship opportunities for domestic students.
