UNIVERSITY of Guyana (UG) students should aim to have a high level of integrity and possess critical thinking skills as Guyana aims to service and benefit from the imminent oil and gas economy.

This was the charge of Department of Energy Director, Dr. Mark Bynoe, during a keynote address at the Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences (FEES), Turkeyen Campus on Thursday.

He said university students must not only read the newspapers, Facebook or simply accept what is related by lecturers.

“One of the things we have to ensure that we have is critical thinking. Critical thinking means that you have to be able to analyse for yourselves not what someone says, but what you have sat and deciphered, delineate and be able to come up with cogent arguments; it is not sufficient to say well I got it off of the Internet, because anyone can post something on the net,” Dr Bynoe told the gathering.

He noted that on too many occasions in Guyana, citizens are swayed not based on their own analysis but “based on what somebody said that somebody else said”.
Bynoe said university students must have a high level of integrity.
Noting that there is a topic on plagiarism which students will be exposed to, Dr. Bynoe said it is very easy to plagiarise but it is also very easy to get caught with scanning software available.

“Because if you start cheating at university, you will cheat later on in life; if you start being dishonest in the classroom, it is difficult to see you becoming honest later on in life. I know we chase after who has gotten a distinction and who has gotten a credit, the important thing is that we are learning as we go along,” he said.
He said it is better to leave the university with not only a degree, but with the assimilation of knowledge that will lead to employment.

“If, as Guyanese, we will be populating the new and emerging oil and gas sector, it is important that we are grounded and have a common understanding in terms of what it needs,” he said.

MULTIPLICITY OF SKILLS

Underscoring that many are interested in hearing about the oil and gas industry, Dr. Bynoe said there are a multiplicity of skills and range of expertise that will be required, such as environmental management specialists, Environmental Protection Agency representatives, financial analysis, lawyers, management specialists, among many other portfolios.
“Many of us are of the opinion that unless I am a geological engineer, unless I am a geologist, unless I am a mechanical engineer, I will not benefit from oil and gas, but I am saying that you will benefit once you make the sacrifice; make the investment today, because Guyana is not just about oil and gas, and oil and gas is not just about the wells, it’s not just about the drills, it’s also about the supplementary infrastructure that is needed,” he said

He urged the students to think about their future since all aspects of development can be used within the oil and gas sector, directly or indirectly.
“I am saying this because many discussions have gone on around oil and gas and Guyana being able to embark on a new frontier, but it is also important for us to stop and ask ourselves, how are we going to benefit from these new resources that will be coming in?” he said.

Reflecting on his days as a UG student, Dr. Bynoe said like many others, he had butterflies in his stomach and had wanted to study geography and economics.
“I had absolutely no idea what a major and a minor meant at that time, but I thought if a major is good, then two majors must be better and if possible three majors best, so I opted for a double major, not knowing where I would end up, but as I started out I realised that there was a great complementarity between an economic degree and a geography degree,” Bynoe said.
He said this lent itself to a multiplicity of areas in which he was able to explore his interest.

CONTINUOUSLY CHALLENGE YOURSELF
“I am saying this because you may start out with one objective in mind, but as university students we have to be continuously challenging ourselves as technology evolves and new opportunities arise and as new areas are birthed before us to be able to say I want to go beyond where I am,” he explained.

Adding that UG is at a greater standard compared to when he attended, the Energy Department director implored students to be patient in their development.
“I am speaking from experience, not that I am trying to sell you something that I myself have not gone through,” he said, while noting that he was paid US$75 a month on his first job and he survived.

“But overtime it allowed me to acquire experience,” he told the gathering, pointing out that just graduating will not make them expert at anything.
He related that a degree does not make someone automatically employable, “because what we are seeing today is that we have persons going through from nursery right up to the master’s level and never worked one day in their lives, and the big question becomes, so how are we going to get the experience if no one employs us?.”
He told the UG students that one of the quickest ways to get experience is to volunteer their services.

“The problem we have is that the day we graduate, we want to ask, how much money are you being paid, and not wanting a low salary, but aiming for mid-range or even higher, and therein lies our problem, because overtime we will get there, but you cannot graduate tomorrow and expect that you are an expert the next day,” he said.