2016 UT PGE Distinguished Alumni Honorees

Thanks to our supporters, almost 200 people filled the Four Seasons Hotel ballroom on Friday, Nov. 11, during the 2016 Distinguished Alumni (DA) Ceremony. The program honored six alumni for their significant contributions to energy production, the Texas economy and higher education. UT PGE graduate and DA Committee Chair Russell Parker (B.S. PE ’00), who is a 2010 DA honoree, served as the emcee for the evening.

As some of the industry’s leading entrepreneurs, engineers and noteworthy executives, the 2016 honorees have positively influenced the field. 

Alex M. Cranberg

B.S., Petroleum Engineering, 1977
MBA, 1981

Alex M. Cranberg, Houston, Texas, was appointed to a six-year term on The University of Texas System Board of Regents by Governor Rick Perry in February 2011.

Regent Cranberg is chairman of the Health Affairs Committee and serves as a member of the Academic Affairs Committee, the Facilities Planning and Construction Committee and the Technology Transfer and Research Committee. In July 2014, he was named chair of the newly created University Lands Advisory Board.  He previously served as chairman of the Facilities Planning and Construction Committee. He also serves as a member of the M. D. Anderson Services Corporation Board of Directors and on the Texas Medical Center Board.

Cranberg is chairman of Aspect Holdings, LLC. He graduated summa cum laude from The University of Texas at Austin in 1977 with a B.S. in petroleum engineering and received an MBA from Stanford University in 1981. After leading General Atlantic Partners’ oil and gas investment activity from 1981 to 1992, Cranberg founded Aspect Energy. Aspect has drilled over 500 exploration wells and made many oil and gas discoveries in Texas and Louisiana, Belize, Hungary and Kurdistan. Aspect has also founded numerous venture technology-driven oilfield service companies, the leading US potash producer, and a wind power development concern. Cranberg was named to the Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Hall of Fame in 2010.

Cranberg has been active in education philanthropy, governance, and policy advocacy. He founded the Alliance for Choice in Education, which has provided tens of millions of dollars in scholarship support for children from low-income families to attend private schools. Cranberg created and funded the Horace Mann Scholarship Challenge, whereby he committed to funding the college education of the 600 attendees of the inner-city Horace Mann Middle Schools. He has also served on various boards of the national school choice organization, Alliance for School Choice, and on the Board of Trustees of Metropolitan State College of Denver.

Alex and his wife Cathy have three daughters and one son and live in Houston.

Jack S. Josey

B.S., Petroleum Engineering, 1939

Jack Smyth Josey was born in Beaumont, Texas, on July 11, 1916. Attending public schools in Houston and graduating from San Jacinto High School in 1934, Josey entered The University of Texas at Austin, where he obtained a Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering in 1939. Josey was president (grand master) of Kappa Sigma, a Goodfellow, Outstanding Student, and foreman (president) of the Texas Cowboys.

Mr. Josey went to work as a petroleum engineer for his father upon graduation and married his childhood sweetheart, Elva Johnson. Outraged by the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, he volunteered for the Navy the next day. Josey departed for the Pacific as a lieutenant j.g. gunnery officer on the destroyer escort Melvin R. Naumann. Lieutenant Josey and his ship were active in the battles of the Coral Sea, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. He was privileged to witness the Marine flag raisings on Mt. Suribachi at Iwo Jima. He and his ship were among the first Americans to enter China after Japan surrendered.

Returning to Houston after the war, Josey bought a five-acre farm outside the city limits as the family’s home, where they resided until the early 1970’s. With the death of his father in 1953, Josey became president and chairman of the Josey Oil Company. In the early 1950s, he and lifelong friend, Robert Park, founded Tercar Theater Company, one of the major movie theater companies in the Houston area in the 1960’s, 70s and 80s. In the 1960s, he became the principal shareholder in Central National Bank.

It was also during the 1950’s that he began a love affair with education, commencing with serving on the Board of Trustees of St. John’s School. Mr. Josey always had a love for The University of Texas at Austin and for UT football, and enjoyed bringing his family to Austin for the games. He maintained that one of the most meaningful things he did was to head the UT Parents Association because he met so many nice people who shared his love of the university.

During the early 1960s, his close friend, Governor John B. Connally, named Josey to the Board of Regents of The University of Texas at Austin. He was named a UT Distinguished Alumnus in 1972 and received a Distinguished Engineering Award in 1973.

In 1982, Josey and his wife, Elva, divorced. In 1983, he married Gretchen Chandler. After her death, Josey married Donna Pearson Neuhoff. Mr. Josey passed away in 2003.

Sue Park

B.S., Petroleum Engineering

Summer internships, college courses and professors, and the bonds she built with her classmates convinced Sue Park of her place in the global energy industry. Upon earning her Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, Sue moved back to her hometown of Houston, Texas, to start her professional career with Chevron.

Since 2007, she has worked with Chevron in various petroleum engineering technical roles and locations. Park continues to work with Chevron as a Lean Sigma advisor for the Chevron Gulf of Mexico Business Unit. In addition to her technical responsibilities, she is a passionate member of the corporate recruiting team. From student organization visits to interviewing engineering students and mentoring summer interns, Park has helped her company and UT PGE students forge successful relationships and careers.

Along with her professional career at Chevron, Park has actively participated with the Society of Petroleum Engineers’ (SPE) Gulf Coast, Evangeline and Delta Sections as she has relocated her home along the Gulf Coast region. She was the 2008-09 young professionals committee chair for the SPE Gulf Coast Section and currently serves as the scholarship program chair for the SPE Delta Section. Most recently, Park was selected as the 2017 Deepwater Technical Symposium chairperson. In 2008, she was named as a “Face of the Future” by Fortune 500 Magazine – an honor given to 48 young professionals across the US.

Sue is recently married and lives in Covington, Louisiana, with her husband, Christopher.

Joe M. Parsley

B.S., Petroleum Engineering, 1951

When Joe M. Parsley retired after more than 30 years in the oil and gas industry, he left behind a legacy of successful, independent Texas oil companies.

Parsley graduated from The University of Texas at Austin in 1951 with a degree in petroleum engineering and began his career as a reservoir engineer for Marathon Oil Corporation. In 1952, he settled in Midland, Texas, and worked for Forest Oil Corp. and then Inca Drilling Co. After teaming up with geologist Howard Parker (B.S. Geology 1942) on a drilling job for an independent oil company, the two formed Parker & Parsley Petroleum Co. over a handshake in 1962.

Parsley’s entrepreneurial spirit, technical skills and strategic approach ensured that Parker & Parsley capitalized on booms and survived busts. Parsley officially retired in 1985 and maintained a close friendship with Parker. The company went public in 1991. In a merger spearheaded by son-in-law and fellow 2016 Petroleum Engineering Distinguished Alumnus Scott Sheffield, Parker & Parsley joined with MESA, Inc. in 1997 to become Pioneer Natural Resources, one of the largest independent oil companies in the nation. In 2015, Parsely and Parker were both inducted into the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum Hall of Fame.

Parsley was a strong supporter of UT Austin and the Cockrell School of Engineering. He was a generous contributor to the Friends of Alec Annual Giving Program and funded the Joe M. Parsley Scholarship Fund and the Joe M. Parsley Excellence Fund. He was a member of the UT System’s Chancellor’s Council, as well as the university’s President’s Association and Littlefield Society. The Cockrell School named Parsley a Distinguished Engineering Graduate in 2003.

Parsley passed away in November 2015 in Kemah, Texas. He is survived by his wife Lucy, two daughters, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Scott D. Sheffield

B.S., Petroleum Engineering, 1975

Scott D. Sheffield is CEO and chairman of Pioneer Natural Resources, one of the nation’s largest independent oil and gas companies.

The son of a petroleum engineer and international executive with ARCO, Scott Sheffield was raised in Tehran, Iran, and grew up in the oil business. After graduating from The University of Texas at Austin with his bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering in 1975, Sheffield joined Amoco Corp. as a reservoir engineer. In 1979, he became the fifth employee of Parker & Parsley Petroleum Co. in Midland, Texas, where he served as the sole staff engineer. He rose to the position of CEO in 1985 and became chairman in 1991. Under Sheffield’s leadership, Parker & Parsley merged with MESA, Inc. to form Pioneer Natural Resources, which primarily operates in the Permian Basin.

Sheffield has earned numerous accolades for his leadership and contributions to the energy industry.

He received the Permian Basin Petroleum Association’s prestigious Top Hand Award in recognition of his leadership within the oil and gas industry and the Permian Basin community. Additionally, he was inducted into the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum Hall of Fame, received the Anti-Defamation League’s Henry Cohn Humanitarian Award in Dallas and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s Hope Award in Midland.

Sheffield has served on many industry and education boards, including the National Petroleum Council, Santos Ltd., America’s Natural Gas Alliance and the Maguire Energy Institute Advisory Board in Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business. A loyal supporter of UT Austin and the Cockrell School of Engineering, Sheffield has served on the Cockrell School’s Engineering Advisory Board and was named a Distinguished Engineering Graduate in 1996. His contributions to the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering facilitated the renewal of the drilling and production curriculum and the recruitment of several new faculty members. He also made a generous donation to the Cockrell School’s new Engineering Education and Research Center.

Sheffield currently resides in Irving, Texas, with his wife Kimberley. They have five children.

John A. Weinzierl

B.S., Petroleum Engineering, 1990
MBA, 1998

John Weinzierl, PE, co-founded Memorial Resource Development LLC, an oil and gas production company, in 2011 and currently serves as the CEO of its successor company, MRD Holdco LLC. Since the company’s formation, John led the public listing of two subsidiary companies, Memorial Resource Development Corp. and Memorial Production Partners LP, and was CEO of an organization that had over 500 employees, produced over 1 billion cubic feet equivalent of gas per day, and operated in six states.

A native of Houston, Weinzierl graduated from The University of Texas at Austin in 1990 with a B.S. in petroleum engineering and joined Conoco Inc. as a petroleum engineer working in drilling and completions. Over time, his responsibilities increased to include both the design and supervision of drilling and completion projects in the US, the Republic of Congo, Nigeria and Norway.

In 1996, Weinzierl enrolled in the university’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) and received an MBA in 1998. During his time at the GSB, he received various academic awards, including the Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence, was named a Sord Scholar and was elected to the Phi Kappa Phi and Beta Gamma Sigma scholastic honor societies.

In 1999, Weinzierl moved to Dallas and joined Natural Gas Partners (NGP), a private equity firm focused in the energy industry, and rose to the position of managing director and operating partner. He was involved in sourcing, reviewing and executing investments in oil and gas production, natural gas midstream and oil field service companies, as well as overseeing portfolio company investments and providing them strategic support. He moved back to Houston in 2007 to open and lead the firm’s Houston office.

He is active in various industry groups, including as a member of the Board of Directors of the Houston Producers Forum and a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers.

Weinzierl is a member of the Cockrell School’s Engineering Advisory Board and a long-standing supporter of the university. He and his wife, Kelli, both of whom are life members of the Texas Exes, are proud to have supported dozens of future engineers since the creation of the John A. Weinzierl Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Engineering and the John and Kelli Weinzierl Endowed Presidential Fellowship in Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering.

The Weinzierls live in Houston with their son, Luke, and actively support local charities including the Houston Museum of Natural Science, St. Francis Episcopal School and the Children’s Assessment Center.