Summer project ready to go

Seventy-nine students have been selected from 830 applications – a new record – to participate in Statoil’s seventh annual summer project.

This programme represents an organised form of holiday job for young people from Norway and other countries who are pursuing university-level studies.

The aim is to improve collaboration between Statoil and higher education institutions, and to give the students experience of working on problem-solving in a large industrial group.

At the same time, the summer project is important for brand building by the group with a view to future recruitment.

Due to work for eight weeks at Statoil’s offices in Trondheim and Stavanger, the students will be working on 25 projects relevant for Statoil’s commercial operation.

“A new feature this year is an expansion in the mentor group, which will thereby be represented in both Stavanger and Trondheim,” reports project manager Knut-Olav Fjell.

“These mentors are intended to act as process drivers for activities being undertaken by the students, both in the sub-projects and between them.

“Particular efforts will be devoted this year to extending the mentor role to the benefit of subsequent summer projects.”

Another important object is to secure more active involvement in the work by the 12 academic tutors, who hail primarily from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim.

“And a third aim is to try to find even better synergies between the projects, since several of them involve the same disciplines,” Mr Fjell explains.

The summer project was organised for the first time in 1998 as a collaboration between Statoil, the NTNU and the Telemark University College.