Getting a good education has always been important to Schrader, who expects his youngest child, a high school senior, to follow his five older siblings in obtaining an undergraduate degree. But it wasn't until last fall that Schrader decided to retire early from his position at Chevron as manager of marketing operations for a five-state region in the Southwest and take the plunge into the classroom.
Schrader, who joined Gulf Corp. in 1953 after having graduated from Texas A&M University, is one of 5,000 employees who has left the company since the announcement in February 1984 that Gulf and Chevron would merge. But he isn't ready to take it easy.
The program, known as Encore, was launched last spring after a group of high school science teachers who toured a Chevron off-shore oil rig complained about the difficulty of finding enough teachers with science backgrounds. Company officials pointed to the ...