When two university students founded the TCU Energy Club in March 2008, they never envisioned the group would grow to include hundreds of members and have access to leaders in the industry.

Justin LaPoten, a junior finance major and energy in technology and management minor, said that since the club started two years ago with about eight members, it has experienced tremendous growth, thanks to its relationship with the TCU Energy Institute. There are currently more than 350 students who pay $50 a semester to participate in the club, LaPoten said.

Ken Morgan, director of the TCU Energy Institute and a member of the club’s advisory board, said LaPoten and Voigt, also a junior finance major, were able to establish the club because the advisory board consists of leaders in the energy business who supported LaPoten and Voigt’s goals from the start, which has contributed to the club’s success, Morgan said.

“What our kids have here is a background, and they can be leaders in that (energy) discussion,” Morgan said. “Our kids are very experienced already. They interact with the big guns.”

LaPoten, the club’s vice president, and Voigt, the club’s president, founded the club at the end of their freshman year. LaPoten said the idea came from observing their friends’ parents working in the energy industry.

Voigt said he and LaPoten noticed that the university did not provide many opportunities for students interested in the energy business to learn and network. The club is now filling that void in part by joining with Young Professionals in Energy, a nonprofit organization with 10,000 student members worldwide, to form a mentorship with energy professionals.

LaPoten said 30 or 40 students in the club have inquired about the mentorship. As part of the mentorship, students would be connected to a specific area of the energy industry. For example, if there were a student interested in legal issues surrounding energy, the club would be able to match that student with an attorney who is working in that field.

Opportunities like these are what the club has been seeking from the beginning, Voigt said.

“Our original goal was to create an outlet to learn about the energy business and network with industry professionals not otherwise accessible to us,” Voigt said. “That goal has been achieved, and we are now looking beyond that to try to create (an) organization on TCU’s campus for students seeking to pursue careers in the energy industry.”

Voigt said that although he and LaPoten founded the club, they received additional help from the university, specifically the TCU Energy Institute and its advisory board. Today, LaPoten said he and Voigt meet monthly with either Morgan or Larry Brogdon, a university alumnus and chair of the TCU Energy Institute’s board of directors, to discuss the club’s efforts.

“We just took an idea and ran with it, only thinking about succeeding, not considering failure,” he said. “We were fortunate to have a tremendous amount of support from TCU staff.”

Voigt said the club is still seeking effective manners to select new leaders.

“We will be working to ensure that leadership opportunities are available to the underclassmen who seek to take over those positions,” Voigt said.

What is more, there are already club members who are “ready to take over when the opportunity presents itself,” Voigt said. Those leaders have to be “intelligent, persistent and not afraid of the word ‘no,'” he said.

Before establishing the club’s mentorship program, LaPoten said he and Voigt want to arrange a national energy conference during the fall semester.

“Being in Fort Worth, we have so many resources right in our backyard with the Barnett Shale and Fortune 500 companies right downtown,” he said. “We think we can become the center of this whole (natural gas) thing.”

To become that center, more qualified students on campus need to seek out opportunities in the industry — when that happens, companies will notice, he said.

“We’re trying to find other ways to get students in front of industry leaders and companies in order to get them more opportunities to get jobs,” LaPoten said.

The club has also teamed with the university’s energy and entrepreneurship class to help bring in speakers with expertise in the energy business, such as such as T. Boone Pickens, university alumnus John Pinkerton and Ross Perot Jr.

“(Students) are learning from the absolute best in the (energy) business,” LaPoten said. “I think that’s what makes our club truly unique.” Morgan said he recently spoke to a student from Tulsa, Okla., who was drawn to the TCU Energy Institute and the Energy Club. Thanks to the club’s efforts, the university can attract more students like that, he said.

“It looks like so many of the eyes out there are on Fort Worth and TCU because of the unique situation we’re in,” Morgan said. “The Energy Club is also where they can raise the flag for a great energy forum for lots of students.”