Since its inception, the Craft & Hawkins Department of Petroleum Engineering has set a standard for outstanding undergraduate education, with a reputation for practical, hands-on training and history of developing engineers who are innovative and ready for practice. Today, undergraduate students are exposed to a traditional core curriculum that includes five hands-on laboratory courses, training in advanced computer simulation, along with electives on modern topics such as natural gas engineering, geothermal energy, and deepwater production.

The Department has twelve faculty members and is growing toward 15 in the coming years. Areas of research specialization include geomechanics, fracture modeling, reservoir engineering, reservoir characterization, carbon storage, cement chemistry and durability, EOR, foam and surfactant processes, wettability and interfacial processes, reservoir geology, geostatistics, drilling, well control and blowout prevention, wellbore stability, borehole mechanics, well design, wellbore CFD, environmental technologies, pore-scale flow modeling, and computational methods. Research funding comes mainly from industry and federal grants.

The Department is home to the Petroleum Engineering Research & Technology Transfer Laboratory (PERTT Lab). The lab houses six wells and associated surface facilities. A new on-site classroom is slated to open in mid 2012. This unique facility is used year-round for education, training, testing, and research.