The PEGG

July 2001

Dan Motyka Receives Order of U of C

APEGGA Life Member Dan Motyka, P.Eng., has received one of the University of Caglary's highest honours for his years of work for the institution. During convocation ceremonies June 14, Mr. Motyka, a past APEGGA president, was presented the Order of the University of Calgary.

"You do these things out of a sense of duty, to give something back to your professions, to help improve the well-being of society and all that good stuff. But still, when you receive something like this -- all I can say is, Wow."

Receiving the award was "humbling yet very satisfying," said Mr. Motyka, because it puts him in the company of deserving people who've accepted the order in years past. "It was a great, great day. It really was."

The university newspaper, The Gazette, credits Mr. Motyka as one of the key builders of the engineering and management departments. He "has helped those two (departments) gain an international reputation of excellence."

The newspaper continues: "(Mr.) Motyka has worked unceasingly to create a world-class engineering facility at University of Calgary."

He began volunteering for U of C in 1980. As chair of the Petroleum Society of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum, Mr. Motyka helped with sponsorship and fundraising for the university's chair in petroleum engineering.
Later he became founding chair of the advisory council for the joint engineering-management program in project management. "Through his leadership and participation over eight years on the council, the program has grown in stature to the point that it is one of the flagship programs of the university," says The Gazette.

He was a founding chair again in 1990, this time for the Engineering Associates Program, which brings the community and the engineering industry into the process of advising the faculty. He returned to chair a steering committee to reactivate the program, from 1994 to 1996.

Then he returned to the petroleum chair, spearheading the 1998 fundraising drive to endow the chair. That job wrapped up in 2000, but Mr. Motyka carried on, this as part of the search committee to find his replacement.

In addition to his work with the unversity and with APEGGA, Mr. Motyka was twice chair of the board of directors of the Centre for Cold Ocean Resource Engineering at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and was a member of the management audit team for the Deep Ocean Drilling program at Texas A&M University.