Dr. Sears is a recently retired faculty member from the LSU Craft and Hawkins Department of Petroleum Engineering, serving from 2005 until 2017 including 6 years as Department Chair.  He received BS and MS degrees from the University of Florida in Geology, and a PhD from Penn State in Geochemistry.  Prior to arriving at LSU, Stephen Sears worked at Shell Oil Company, including assignments to the New Orleans office, as a geologist and manager.  He is the author of over forty technical, scientific and general interest publications on geology, engineering and higher education.  

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Stephen grew up in South Florida, boating and fishing off of the Florida Keys and in the Everglades, hobbies that he continues to pursue today in south Louisiana.   He became interested in the World War II German U-Boat campaign in 2001, when he was on an oil field vessel that discovered the sunken U-166, on the Gulf of Mexico seafloor in mile deep water near the wreck of the torpedoed freighter Robert E Lee.  

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Stephen Sears currently lives with his wife, Barbara, in Mandeville, Louisiana.  His new novel, Sunniland, was published by Indigo River Publishing on August 20, 2019.