Rick Abegg ’83
Abegg has been selected to a position on the Exploration Review Team (ERT), Chevron’s corporate exploration assurance team. The ERT assures standardized and consistent risk and volume assessments for the Chevron’s worldwide exploration portfolio and reviews results of exploration wells. Abegg has relocated to The Woodlands, Texas, where he is currently working remotely from home.
John Ackerman ’75
Ackerman received U.S. Patent 10,532,935 Water Harvester and Purification System and Method of Making and Using Same in January 2020. He was elected Fellow of theAmerican Society of Civil Engineers, Class of 2020. He was also elected Fellow, formerly known as the Distinguished Member Award,of theSociety for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration, Class of 2021.
John Crook ’81
Crook retired in April 2020. He was the former senior vice president of Environmental Health and Safety at Diversified Gas and Oil.
Rebekah Hoffner ’14
Hoffner went on to graduate school at Philadelphia University, now called Thomas Jefferson University, to obtain a master’s degree in disaster medicine and management. Currently, she is the emergency management coordinator at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is responsible for all disaster preparedness planning, training, mitigation, and response. She wanted to work at a children’s hospital because of THON and feels a strong connection to the hospital because of her experiences at Penn State.
Daniel Hummer ’10
The past year has been extremely eventful for the Hummer family, but everyone is well. An exciting project assisting the American Museum of Natural History in New York to develop a new mineral exhibit occupied a portion of Hummer’s 2019, as did some new research on the statistics of mineral compositions and symmetry types. Hummer continues to teach as a geology professor at Southern Illinois University, but with only online classes this fall. Last July, the Hummersmoved into a new house that better accommodates their growing family, and includes wonderful space for his father-in-law and his mineral and element collections.
Ken LaSota ’77
In 1998, LaSota was elected mayor of the Borough of Heidelberg. He has since been reelected five times and is serving his twenty-second year as mayor. Heidelberg is located in Southwestern Pennsylvania, six miles southwest of Pittsburgh, has a population of 1,237, and was founded in 1903. LaSota was named Pennsylvania Mayor of the Year for 2020 by the Pennsylvania State Mayors Association.
Kent Newsham ’78
Newsham was promoted to senior director of subsurface characterization and application and chief of petrophysicist last fall as part of Occidental Petroleum’s (Oxy) acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum. He directs Oxy’s rocks and fluids and petroleum systems teams and provides technical and career guidance to sixty global Oxy petrophysicists.
Newsham and Ronald Chemali, were awarded a provisional patent for the development of the Pulsed Neutron Scanner, PNS. Oxy is partnering with Core Labs for the development and commercialization of the PNS. The system will allow continuous measurement of whole core or core samples using a high-energy neutron accelerator and high-precision CeBr3 neutron detectors. The elastic portion of the measurement will provide elemental yields while the inelastic portion will provide porosity and water saturation information. Continuous measurement of whole core will occur while the core cylinders are still in the sleeves, providing rapid measurement and results. Measurements will include spectral gamma ray, continuous mineral composition, total porosity and total water saturation. The reduced cycle time, hours to days, will allow for results to impact operations decisions, which is not the current norm for most core tests. The minimal exposure time to evaporative processes will yield greater precision and accuracy of fluid saturations, currently one of the greatest challenges in tight oil and organic mudstone reservoirs.
Phil Throwbridge ’13
Throwbridge is currently working for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the Louisiana National Guard. This past spring the team he is working with won an award from the National Military Fish and Wildlife Association.
Alumni Passings
Mr. Gregory Baron ’58
Dr. Jen-Ho Fang ’61
Dr. J. Chris Kraft ’51
Mr. Everett K. Kaukonen ’51
Dr. John W. Mgonigle ’65
Dr. Howard P. Ross ’63
Dr. Dale R. Simpson ’56
Mr. Ronald F. Spamer ’71