After being recruited by Stanford, USC, and UCLA to play football, Larry Watson chose to attend OSU on an athletic scholarship and to study chemical engineering. The football coach worked around Watson’s engineering commitments and he was able to start at running back and wide receiver. Upon graduation, Watson took a position at Chevron in the Bay Area, where he worked for 28 years. He started his work as a project engineer and worked his way up to management positions, including chief engineer of a high capacity refinery, manufacturing manager of the seven fertilizer plants in the U.S., and finally manager of both Transportation Services and Materials and Equipment Engineering.
Before he left the company, he was the group manager of Process and Engineering Technology, a position in which he managed 225 engineers and 30 support personnel. As group manager, he was also a representative for the Chevron Research and Technology on the Engineering Boards for Upstream Exploration and Production of Refining Technologies.
Degrees
- BSChE 1971 - CBEE