Texas A&M Galveston Teams with Shell Oil to Enhance the Maritime Industry    

By Bob Wright, Texas A&M Galveston Marketing and Communications

Texas A&M University at Galveston hosted their third annual Shell Leadership Weekend February 15th through 17th.  The event, funded through a grant from Shell Oil, presented leadership breakout sessions led by Shell executives to thirty graduate and undergraduate students from the university's Maritime Administration, Marine Transportation, Marine Engineering and Ocean & Coastal Systems Engineering departments.

Texas A&M Galveston students attending Shell Leadership weekend.

Representatives from Shell Trading Company, Bertling Logistics, Huntsman Chemical, Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., American Eagle Tankers, GAC Group and Trans Ocean Bulk Logistics gave presentations, sat on panels and served as judges for the event.  The industry professionals spoke to the students throughout the event about decisive decision making, ethical leadership, networking and other valuable skills they will need as they move through their careers.

Later, 7 teams of 4 students were presented with a real life maritime industry scenario where they were challenged to present the most efficient and economic solutions to the judging panels.  The scenario provided dynamic challenges consisting of navigation, engineering and management.  Lessons learned from the leadership breakout sessions proved useful in the solutions presented by the students.

The teams were scored by the judges with the winning team members receiving $625 each.  The winning team consisted of Logan Vail of St. Augustine, FL, Marissa Malinoski of Sugar Land, TX, Thane Jurenka of Luling, LA and Audrea Grieco of Andover, MA.

Logan Vail, Marissa Malinoski, Rob Smith with Shell, Thane Jurenka, Audrea Greico, Chris Flanagan with Shell, Tim Downs with Shell and Cerian Mellor with Shell.

"Each student on the team approached the case study from a differing perspective within the maritime industry allowing the students to learn from each other," said Dr. Todd Sutherland, Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs.  "The executives from Shell said they were extremely impressed with the depth of knowledge presented by the student teams, and the students were very appreciative of the opportunities to interact with each other and all of the people from industry.  The Shell Leadership weekend was an incredible success."