Nancy L. Engelhardt-Moore, 2003 Distinguished Service Award
Nancy
Engelhardt-Moore of GeoFix-it Consulting, Houston, Texas, is the recipient
of the Gulf Coast Section SEPM Distinguished Service Award for 2003. Nancy
is a native of northern Illinois, born in Chicago and raised in rural
Illinois near Rockford. As a young girl of 8 she was already collecting
model dinosaurs and amazed her mom with her mastery of the names. Nancy
nurtured her casual interests in nature, art and paleontology through
her early school years until 1969 when she received the National Essay
Press award and graduated with honors from Harlem High School in Loves
Park, Illinois.
She started her advanced academic career at Rock Valley College in Rockford and the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater where she received a B.A. in 1973 with high honors. Nancy majored in art with a minor in geology. Her first academic mentor was Dr. Jack Travis at Whitewater who inspired her with his expertise in many areas of geology and enthusiasm for teaching. Nancy's first career was two years as a commercial artist. She became dissatisfied with that and returned to college to explore her other primary interest, geology, by entering the graduate school of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. There she completed courses for a geology major and studied marine micropaleontology under Dr. Peter-Noel Webb. Nancy was part of a groundbreaking group of young researchers unraveling the complex Cenozoic history of the Antarctic continent and the surrounding marine basins. Her thesis concerned the foram micropaleontology and biostratigraphy of Deep Sea Drilling Project Site 265 in the southeast Indian Ocean. Nancy left DeKalb with her M.S. in 1980 and headed south to explore the challenging world of the petroleum business in Houston.
She joined the biostrat staff of Amoco's Houston Exploration Department where her responsibilities focused on biostratigraphic and paleoenvironmental interpretations utilizing foraminifera and ostracods. In this phase of her Amoco career, she mastered the faunas of the Gulf Coast Tertiary from the Midway through the Lower Miocene. Nancy was nicknamed "The Bug" by her co-workers and warmly remembers her mentors Joe Gammage, Dick Abrahams and Clarence Albers. She thrived in the nurturing environment of the paleo group. In 1988, as a Senior Paleontologist in the Geoscience Technical Services group at Amoco, Nancy expanded her expertise to areas outside of the Gulf Coast such as Brunei, Costa Rica, Panama, Trinidad and the South China Sea. This change influenced her both in terms of geologic applications and responsibilities, and geographic coverage. Nancy worked to enhance well log correlations, sequence stratigraphy and applied graphic correlation to stratigraphic problems. She was a key contributor to the discovery of major reserves in Trinidad that resulted in the construction of the first LNG plant in the Caribbean. Nancy and her teammates were recognized internally as one of Amoco's most outstanding exploration teams and she received several Recognition and Rewards for her contributions. Her expanded duties also involved her in exploration in several portions of Egypt, Peru and Venezuela. In 1994, Nancy joined the Worldwide Exploration Business Group as a Senior Staff Geologist. Her primary duties shifted to prospect development, regional evaluations and risk assessment. She spent three years working Nigeria and Yemen and developed several new exploration plays onshore in Yemen. Nancy also found time to act as training coordinator for visiting foreign geoscientists working with Amoco.
Nancy joined The Andrews Group Int'l in 1997 as a Senior Geologist in their Houston-based Geosciences and Reservoir Characterization Group. While there, she had multiple duties on projects in Mexico and Venezuela. She formed GeoFix-It Consulting in 2000 and has applied her consulting expertise in the Gulf of Mexico, Italy, Brazil, Romania and the Caspian Sea. Nancy has coauthored several articles and contributed to the GCSSEPM Foundation's "Gulf of Mexico Basin Biostratigraphic Index Microfossils, A Geoscientist's Guide" Parts 1-2, 1999 and Part 3, 2001.
Nancy has served the GCSSEPM in many areas. She first served as an officer when she became Secretary in 1989-91. Since then she has been President (1994), Field Trip Chair (1994-95), Gulf Coast Tertiary Equivalency Project (GCTEP) Paleobathymetry Coordinator (1997), member of the GCTEP Paleogene Committee (2000-2001), Bob F. Perkins Research Conference Program Advisory Committees (2000-2003), GCSSEPM Foundation Trustee (1999-2003), Foundation Trustee Chair (2001), BFP Research Conference AV and Poster Committees (2000-2003) and GCSSEPM representative to the Houston Geological Society Earth Science Week Committee (2001-2003). Nancy is also a member of the North American Micropaleontologic Section of the SEPM, International SEPM, HGS and the AAPG (Certified Petroleum Geologist).
Nancy is married to Robert Moore, a Houston tax advisor and CFP. When not contemplating her future in geology and the petroleum business, Nancy likes to indulge in her hobbies of science fiction art collection and gardening. She also likes to lavish attention on her three cats and vintage Camaro, and 1968 Pontiac LeMans convertible. In the fall, Nancy and Bob often assist with weddings at the Texas Renaissance Festival. They also do volunteer work at the West Houston Assistant Ministries (WHAM), a multi-denominational program providing a food bank, clothing, job search and training for the needy.