Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself, your role and your company?

A: Yes, I started Tolunay-Wong Engineers in 1993. We started out with 2-3 people actually, I had a secretary, but since then, we've grown into about 400 people in this area. We have 13 offices in Texas and Louisiana. Mainly we are doing soil engineering, geotechnical engineering and serving – everybody can be our client, actually – but we mainly focus on oil and gas and the energy sector as well. So, we're doing quite well. There are exciting things coming up in 2025 – a lot of energy projects along the Gulf Coast area, and also we're doing a lot of work inland in big cities. Texas is growing so we have a lot of land development, commercial and residential, things of that nature. We're looking forward to the future and we're very optimistic.

Q: In 2021 Texas Governor Abbott appointed you to serve on the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB). Please can you share more about your role and the work of the THECB?

A: It's a political appointment. I've been involved in politics since I started my company, and I served on the Sugar Land City Council over six years as a city councilman, and then then-Governor Perry appointed me to the Texas Board of Professional Engineers. The board regulates all engineers in the State of Texas. We are the second largest state with the most engineers – a little bit less than California, but we're comparable to California in terms of the number of engineers. I served there as chairman for 14 years, and then Governor Abbott moved me in 2021 to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which is the board that regulates all universities – public universities because there's state funding – regulates all public universities, community colleges and technical colleges for higher education. The carrot is we provide funding to them. We work with all public universities, community colleges and technical colleges to make sure that we achieve the goals that the state launched. The state launched two major goals. One of the major goals is that by 2030, we want to have 60% of adults in State of Texas – adult meaning from 18 to 50 or something like that – to have a post-high school certification or credential or better yet to have a college degree. We want to make sure that we have a very highly educated workforce in the State of Texas, so we want to have all the adults to have some sort of potential value, so to speak. That's one of the goals that we work very hard on, especially with community colleges and technical colleges, to make sure that they attract folks that can think, that they can train in such a way that they can get some credit in. A very easy example is welding certificates – they can be a certified welder or certified driver for 18-wheelers. It is beyond the high school diploma, they have some sort of credentials. We want to have 60% of adults to have that kind of credential. That's the first goal. The second goal is  in State of Texas, we want to have at least 10-12 Tier One universities, meaning research universities that can compete with the North East, those Ivy League universities, and also California – the West Coast has a lot of great universities. In Texas, so far, we're inching forward, we want to push that initiative but we don't have a timeline for that. We are hoping that we can achieve that goal in the near future, to have at least 10-12 Tier One research universities. Those are the two goals that we launched under the state leadership, and then we push all the universities, all the community colleges and technical colleges to achieve the goals that we set up. Our yearly budget is $3 billion for our agency. We are saying for 2025 it's about $3.4 billion to assist all the institutions, to try to move forward to achieve those two goals.

Q: What are the most significant workforce challenges that major energy projects on the Gulf Coast face today, and how can higher education address these gaps?

A: We do have a lot of major energy projects along the coastal area. All the plants are expanding. We have chemical plants – new chemical plants setting up along the coastal area. We have LNG plants. We have a lot of pipelines transporting product from the Permian Basin all around the state. We have a very substantial solar energy plant setting up in West Texas to the Oklahoma area, we have wind farms in South Texas all the time. It's a very exciting time for the energy state, which is the State of Texas. So, now we come to the workforce. Yes, we have a lot of growth in terms of population in the State of Texas, but it’s not enough. From the technician type of personnel, all the way to engineers, all the way to management.  It’s a big challenge for us to meet the workforce needs, because without the workforce, all these projects will not be successful. We are well aware of that at the state board level. So, at the state board level, our higher education level, we are working with a K-12 agency, which is the Texas Education Agency. They regulate K-12. And also we work with the Texas Workforce Commission, which they focus on, mainly workforce. Tri-agency co-ordination is so important for the State of Texas, because with higher education, we do very well, but you don’t have a pipeline of high school graduates coming in. It’s not going to work either. So K-12 is the number one priority to push. So, in 2025, I think the state legislature is trying to figure out what kind of funding they’re going to assist the K-12 with. But of course, it’s beyond us, we’re higher education. With higher education we are so blessed that we have a lot of state support, a lot of funding. Like I said, for our agency already every year the budget is $3.4-3.5 billion. Basically most of the funding is to fund the universities, state colleges and community colleges. Our administration is not a very big administration. So, you can see we are coordinating from K-12 to higher education to the Texas Workforce Commission. The Texas Workforce Commission always works with us to tell us: “Okay, now position yourselves so that we can meet the whole region of Texas”. Each region in Texas is not the same. We may need a different kind of workforce in coastal areas compared to the panhandle area or in the lumber area – they require a different kind of workforce compared to Central Texas. So, we are working directly with those colleges and technical colleges, community colleges in those regions to basically focus on the needs coming from Texas Workforce Commission – the needs of the workforce in the state’s different regions – so that we can try to address those issues.

Q: How is the THECB’s ‘Building a Talent Strong Texas’ strategic plan addressing the specific workforce needs of major energy projects on the Gulf Coast?

A: It is a challenge to us, because, like I said, we set out a goal of 60x30 – by 2030, 60% of workforce needs to have a certification. So the challenge is, we set a goal – how are we going to encourage them to get that credential? We’re working on different fronts, with different initiatives. The first one is by making it easier for people to transfer the credit among community colleges, technical colleges and universities. Because different people are at a different stage of life. Some people may  just want to get a certificate in welding and be a welder, that’s it. But some people want to come to the community college and say, “Look, I want to take care of all those common courses like English and Political Science, whatever they may be. I want to transfer to a four-year university”. To make it easier, we need to work with the community colleges and technical colleges, among all the public universities as well. So, make it easier for them to move around. “Okay, I want to jump to the University of Texas now.” “Okay, but I I’ve been taking two years of classes in community college. What should I do with that?” Well, we’ll make the University of Texas recognize those classes, so that they will go to the university and say, “Okay, I can just get another two years and get my degree”. That requires a lot of co-ordination from our board, because different colleges have different criteria. We don’t run the individual colleges, we coordinate – that’s why our body is called Coordinating Board. We’re working with them and say all the universities come together and ask if they can recognize certain classes in different degrees. That’s the thing about it that’s a complication – there’s a different degree in English or in business, in engineering. So, we’re working very hard to try to make sure that we have the ease of transfer of credits among all universities and community colleges and technical colleges. If we can achieve that – we are making progress actually, at every board meeting we have a progress report, and we look at that and we kind of tweak it a little bit. We have a lot of stakeholders come in to help us out doing that so we are having great success, we’re making a lot of progress. That’s the number one priority, making sure that people can get the credit they would want. The second is there are folks that, because of different stages of life, they go to colleges and they attend for two years, and because they get married, or they have kids or whatever, they drop off and they will lose two years of experience. So, we are working with colleges to see if we can make it so whenever somebody goes to college, they can get a partial credit, some sort of certificate, so that they won’t waste two years or three years, or even never get a degree because of a lifestyle change, a situation change, so they won’t lose what they’ve done already. We are working with universities and colleges and trying to work to find some sort of way that we can maybe provide them some sort of associate degree – I don’t know. So, that will give them credentials so that when they go out to meet with the employers they don’t just say  “I have a high school diploma, I dropped out of college”. Okay, no. “I have a high school diploma, but then I got some credential. Well, actually, I’ve done two years of engineering classes, and yeah, I didn’t get a degree, but I got that credential”. So the employer will recognize that he or she is better trained than just a high school diploma. Things of that nature we’re trying to enhance – basically enhance everyone that’s going through all the colleges and community colleges and technical colleges to somehow get the credit so that they can prove to the employer that they have training, so they can benefit the employer in terms of education – the educated workforce area. So, there’s a lot initially that we’re working on and we’re trying to be creative too. It’s never been done before, but I think we need to be creative so that we can show that our Texans have some sort of education that will benefit whoever the potential employers are, so that we can continue to upgrade this educated workforce category.

Q: What role do partnerships between universities, community colleges and energy companies play in strengthening the talent pipeline for Gulf Coast energy projects?

A: This is very important. I know some of the community colleges are already doing that, for example. Just as a good example, Lone Star College is working with all the Gulf Coast plants. They have a joint venture – all the petrochemical plants come in with Lone Star College and say, “Look, that’s why we need the workforce. How do we do that?” Lone Star Community College says, “Okay, what we can do is work with you to come up with some sort of curriculum to educate whatever type of workforce that you need”, very specific to those coastal chemical plants’ needs. And then they will come in and create a curriculum. They create a way of getting this done. And then they’re going to come to our board and say, “Look, we have this, what kind of funding can you give us?” They can assist those employers – and those employers will chip into too, to come in and get those going – and then they will have students coming in and they go through the whole process. Of course, the people benefiting the most are the students. The students don’t have to pay anything. They may even get some stipend going to education, or they can get a job in the plant as assistants so that they can continue their education. But the colleges also get some funding from us so that they can create a curriculum, have all the right type of teachers or professors to teach the students. The students will continue to learn on the job, and then at the same time learn some more theory in whatever area they are pursuing. And when they graduate, they get some sort of certificate. It’s not a four-year college degree, but they get some sort of certificate in that area, they are certified from the community colleges. So they get a credential, and then the employer will get the benefit of getting a very educated workforce. I think we’re encouraging that type of partnership from the board and the colleges and the employer, whatever their different needs. It doesn’t have to be oil and gas, it can be project management, it can be manufacturing, it can be AI. Whatever that may be, we’re encouraging the colleges in seeking out the employer. The employer also needs to work with the community colleges, because we do have initiatives in terms of funding sources. We have already secured that, so we work with the community colleges to do that. And universities are the same way. Basically, another initiative – actually a very important initiative – is research. Research is focused on universities. The typical workforce is coming out from community college, but we’re pushing that employer and university and us as a board combined to do a research initiative, bringing in some creative research idea so that we can do research and development through the employer and the university and our board. It’s the same way, but community colleges will push the day-to-day workforce right away. They’ll create it in one year or nine months – a certificate is enough sometimes. This university initiative in research is pushing for long-term, advanced research so that we can create a much better, different kind of research idea in development, so that we can be a state that hopefully in the future will rival the Bay Area, the Silicon Valley, or the other areas that will be created in research and development. So, the employer has a big role in this, because we need the employer to work with the colleges, and then we are the partner with all these initiatives. So, we’re advertising, we’re pleading with those employers, “Think outside of box, what you need, and then identify a partner, and then work with us, and we can get it done”.

Q: What initiatives or programs have been most successful in connecting recent graduates to opportunities in major energy developments?

A: I already talked about how Lone Star College is one of the great examples. High schoolers come in and then Lone Star College will say, “We already have a program with ExxonMobil down in the Baytown area or in the coastal area that they need those skilled workers”. And the graduate says, “Yeah, I’m interested”. And then the community college will say, “We have a curriculum of nine months or one year. It’s all paid for, you have a stipend for this, whatever that may be, or you can even work part time in that plant, and work with the employer”. That was very successful, not only for oil and gas, but also for more advanced high-tech areas. We are pushing for that, the state is pushing for high-tech as well. As you know, we’re lagging behind compared to California, of course, but I think we’re making progress. And we've heard a lot about the Austin area having a lot of high-tech initiatives and we are very interested in continuing to push for that.

Q: What measures are being taken to ensure that top talent developed in Texas stays in the Gulf Coast region, rather than moving elsewhere?

A: That’s a great question. Talent is always moving around, right? They will not stay in one place. So, we’re looking in the K-12 first, high school graduates, graduate talent – the top 10% or whatever, the great talent in high school – why they’re going to California, and why they’re going even overseas to the UK, to London, where there are great schools, or why they’re going to the Ivy League. Why can’t they stay in the State of Texas? So, we are focused on the greatest high school talent, making sure that now we have, maybe in the future, 10 or 12 Tier One universities, and the ranking is high enough that they will stay in the State of Texas if they’re moving up. So that’s one point. Another point is when they graduate from our great colleges, do we have enough work, enough potential careers for them to stay in the State of Texas? Right now, we do. As a matter of fact, right now, in our colleges we don’t generate enough engineers. I know because I served for 12-14 years on the state board for engineering. So, in the State of Texas, we do have enough work for all the graduates, plus more actually. We are hiring – even my companies, I’m hiring from our state. Recently, I had an MIT student come to intern with us. In the State of Texas, we do not have enough graduates to meet the demand of the growth of the state, so we will be growing in different areas. We want to make sure that we continue to have employers generate enough work so that they can fit all the graduates. But our challenge right now is to get enough graduates to do that, and that’s a different kind of challenge, not like having too many graduates where they have to go to other states to find jobs. If they want to stay in the State of Texas, they can find work but we need to continue to have this line, or channel, so that we can channel in from the K-12 to our community college graduates, to university graduates and to the employers. That’s why we’re working with the Texas Workforce Commission, so we have a really, really nice channel, so that we can keep everything in the State of Texas. They’re working on the way, but that’s ideal. I’m very happy, because, like I said, we do have a lot of work in the State of Texas to accommodate all the graduates. It’s not like there’s no work, we just don’t have enough graduates. So that’s why we’re really pushing for coordinated action.  Every time we meet, we approve a lot of new degrees, PhDs, Masters. So we need to generate more degrees in our universities so that we can train more graduates. So, that’s a different kind of problem.

Q: What key policy changes or legislative efforts will have the greatest impact on positioning Texas as the top state for education and workforce readiness?

A: Last session, almost two years ago now, higher education in Texas scored very high from the state legislatures. I’ll give you a little background so you understand a little bit more about Texas really pushing for higher education. In the beginning, the state constitution actually dictated a Texas Permanent University Fund that funds only two schools, the University of Texas and Texas A&M University. It’s by constitution, so they get all the funding. That’s why they are a Tier One university. But last session, Texas created another funding source because our oil and gas revenue is so high and we have enough money. We created a big university fund called the Texas University Fund, that funds four other universities other than the University of Texas and Texas A&M. So those four universities are eligible to get into this big pot of money so that we can push them to be a Tier One university, or research university. And some other lower-tier universities are seeing that pot of money right now, and everybody is trying to beef up, because there are certain criteria in terms of getting into that pot of money, like the number of faculties, PhDs, graduates and your research funding, things of that nature. We have set up criteria, but these are to level the playing field. All the other universities, if they meet the criteria, you can take your hand and dig into that pot of money, so everybody is gearing up. I think that’s the incentive we push to achieve. Our goal to have maybe 10-12 Tier One universities in the very near future. I’m hoping that that’s the case. So, that’s a major change in terms of funding source, and another funding source for the community colleges and technical colleges. We changed the policy last time, tried to focus the community colleges and the technical colleges on  measuring their graduate outcomes. What I mean by graduate outcomes is putting more accountability on the community colleges and technical colleges, but giving them more money if they achieve that. That’s the incentive to push them to be more accountable. What’s the outcome? The outcome is, we want to measure whenever graduates coming out from the community colleges or technical colleges – when the school needs to track them so that we find out whether they can get a higher paying job. What kind of job do they get if they graduate from your community college degree or two year degree or certificate? You need to track them to show that what you produce is a benefit to the state – which is an educated workforce that get jobs and take care of their family, and get more advancement opportunities because they get a higher paying job. So, we are pushing this outcome-based incentive to all community colleges and technical colleges. As you can see, the whole goal is to push the workforce to be more educated and become a workforce. So, with those two initiatives I think we can launch or match our two goals I mentioned earlier, push the goals to have an educated workforce and also research. I think we’re set in terms of what we prepare, and now we are going through the implementation process and hopefully in the next few years we see the fruit of these two initiatives.

Q: What would be your advice for major energy project stakeholders who are facing an increasingly competitive and costly workforce landscape?

A: I hope I can promulgate this message to all the stakeholders, especially in the energy sector. Some of them don’t even know that there’s a great initiative, by cooperation with the community college and the board. And then we can provide a way of producing a workforce for the companies. The message is not there yet. Unfortunately, I don’t think a lot of energy stakeholders and management know about this specific deal of working with community colleges and the board, because they really don’t know that the goal of the State of Texas is to help to push that workforce certificate. And a lot of energy sector stakeholders require a lot of certified people in the plants and in the workforce. I think if we can get the message out, I think they will find it very interesting. Right now, sometimes they are internally certifying them, but they take a lot of resources for them too. They’re taking care of them. I think if they can work it out with the community colleges and us, and we can make it a much bigger deal for our high school graduates and for our workforce as well – I think I need to get the message out. The problem with that is the board is a government agency, so we don’t have a lot of means. We don’t know how to advertise this, so people in the industry don’t know. So, it requires me going out to talk to people and this is a very slow process. Right now one of the problems is those plants, internally, have all the certificates. We don’t know about it either, because if we can count them, I think we can achieve our 60x30 goal. But they don’t tell us because they don’t know us and we don’t know them. We don’t know which company is doing their internal certificates. We really don’t know, and if you will work with community colleges, then you have accountability too. So, this results in multiple certificates all set up by all the stakeholders. It’s not just maybe Exxon doing their own and Shell doing their own. They may not be the same, so we cannot recognize them. But if they all go through the community colleges, “this is the way to produce a welder, this the way to produce a driver, this is the way to produce whatever technician, a chemical technician”, and it’s all uniform, then we can recognize it and we can give them a college, can give a certificate to the student, and then we can count them as a certified student. There’s a lot of benefit if we can do it together instead of them doing individually, and we can provide resources as well. That’s one of the things I hope that we can work with all the major energy stakeholders on and we can launch this initiative.