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The state of mining education; What does the future hold for the next generation [Mining Engineering](Mining Engineering Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) by Mining Engineering Staff Despite the recent pullback in metal and mineral prices, and the associated market adjustments, the mining industry is still facing a serious issue with the declining availability of graduate expertise. This is due to a combination of an aging workforce, retirements and retrenchments, coupled with a lack of suitably qualified graduates entering the workforce. The issue has certainly improved since 2004 when the industry picked up the rates of hiring graduate engineers and mining/mineral school enrollments picked up in response. This hiring effort has helped to cover the "gap" years from about 19852000, when industry demand for graduates was particularly poor. However, the recent market pullback is likely to set back this progress, as recruitment and hiring wavers as a result of cost cutting measures and economic uncertainty. A key issue for the mining industry is how to ensure the survival and growth of relevant "core" degree programs. Such programs include mining, metallurgical, mineral processing and geological engineering. The mining industry needs a healthy, high-level education program to ensure an adequate supply of appropriately qualified graduates for the mining industry. Two-thirds of the professionals entering the minerals industry who graduated within the past 40 years graduated prior to 1985. Since 1985, we have been living off the legacy of graduation classes from the mid1970s and early 1980s. It is estimated that we have been producing graduates at approximately 40 to 50 percent of the sustaining rate since about 1985. Further growth in the domestic industry would increase graduate requirements significantly, and the export of U.S.-graduates to other parts of the world (as is currently occurring) also impacts the total graduate requirements. To maintain a healthy education system, we need qualified and experienced faculty who want to teach and are rewarded for teaching to ensure the long-term success and viability of our industry. I believe there are three critical issues that must be tackled to address this crisis: 1. Ph.D. funding and support. 2. Faculty retention and faculty career development. 3. Appropriate post-graduate research funding. SME is working on a plan to address these issues, and we expect to roll out an initiative to address items 1 and 2 in early 2015. Item 3 is a more complex and far reaching issue that will require an effective and sustained effort over a longer period of time to secure the needed industry and federal/state funding for research. The following interviews by prominent industry professionals and academics at key U.S. schools offering core mining and mineral programs serve to highlight and underscore this critical need. The perspectives offered by these interviews provide a number of important insights into the problems universities face in maintaining the programs. It is imperative that we work together within SME to address these issues as a high priority. John Marsden 2014 SME President Issue: The looming crisis in mining education. Hugh Miller, Colorado School of Mines: The challenges facing mining higher education are a lot more complicated than they appear, and stem from fundamental changes in both the industry and academia over the last 30 years. There are several interdependent reasons for why we've gotten to where we are now. The biggest threat I currently see is the lack of a viable pipeline to produce candidates to replace aging faculty. This isn't a U.S. or Canadian problem, but is universal throughout the developed world. The second major issue is the way mining departments are viewed and evaluated by university administrators. Given the current assessment criteria used by most universities (student credit hours, Ph.D.s generated, scholarly publications, and research volume), mining programs will never do well in two of the four criteria. Trying to attract high-quality candidates who possess the academic and professional qualifications necessary to be successful as a university professor is becoming increasing difficult. To recruit potential candidates with industry experience into Ph.D. programs - there must be a motivating reason and it's certainly not compensation or work load. Usually these individuals enter academia because they enjoy working with students or they have an entrepreneurial bent that can't be readily met in industry. In industry, you're often focused on tangible results associated with the current reporting period. Academia, however, allows an individual to take a bit longer-term outlook, particularly with regards to technology and research, and the freedom to pursue areas of personal interest. Most of the time, individuals who pursue careers in academia do so because of their love of working with students, and it affords them a unique ability to collaborate with others. Put simply, the US. is not producing enough mining Ph.D. students and there is little incentive to attract them to these programs. Emily Sarver, Virginia Tech: I'm definitely concerned. Even in our department, two to three (faculty) will probably retire in the next five years at Virginia Tech, and two of those are critical to what we do at Virginia Tech. We are the only mining engineering (ME) program within an accredited Research One engineering university, and we're being pushed in two directions. On the one side there's industry, whose focus is on educating, on turning out good bachelor's students who can staff and sustain the industry. Masters and Ph.D.s are less important to the industry. On the other side is the university, which, as a Research One university, is constantly pushing to increase the rankings, increase the research dollars, publish and turn out Ph.D.s. The mining industry just doesn't have a huge need for Ph.D.s. Of course, they need Ph.D.s to staff the faculty of universities to produce more bachelor's degree students. However, recently we have started to have these directions come together. In the last round of hiring, only one of the final candidates had a mining engineering background. There are fewer Ph.D.s overall in mining; there isn't the money to support them. Research dollars are the only way to support ME Ph.D.s, and there are few research dollars out there. It's very competitive. A few mining engineering students might be able to compete with other engineers for a National Science Foundation (NSF) fellowship, but there's a lot of competition. If I want to take on a Ph.D. student, I need to be able to secure $40,000 a year for four years to cover stipend, tuition and other costs. This is very difficult to do. Mary Poulton, University of Arizona: One of the things I that struck me when SME did the pipeline survey a few years back was that none of the Ph.D. students who wanted to teach wanted to teach right away, and none of them wanted to do research. So the problem at the heart of the sustainability crisis is not just about teaching, it's about research and creating researchers. Part of the problem is that, in the past, industry jobs were seen as high risk. Now university jobs are seen as high risk, as the government cuts back funding. Also we just have this smaller group of qualified people tugged on by more attractive forces. The mining industry is not going to change how academia is run - it's too small. That said, we've always been a bit leading edge in terms of coming up with solutions. The issues we're having are not unique to mining. All across the university, in the engineering disciplines, the same challenges are cropping up. We've seen that undergrads respond to market forces. If there are well paying jobs and scholarships to support study, they will come. Do Ph.D.s and professors respond to market forces? That's less clear. But it seems that if you have the funding, you will find people who want to do the work. It's a complex problem, and it would definitely help to have a steadier pipeline of research dollars and an ability to fund tenure track faculty. It's hard to do that, though, without government support." Mike Moats, Missouri University of Science and Technology: The mining engineering education crisis is well-documented and easier to measure. The mineral processing crisis is harder to measure. It falls in the cracks between disciplines. There are eight metallurgical engineering departments - which is where mineral processing usually lives - but these have been subsumed by materials engineering departments. The decline in mineral processing as an identity has been the result. Some professors specialize in it within the larger departments, but it's not the same. There's less focus. The B.S. in mineral processing does not exist at very many institutions. There are other related disciplines that offer degrees and even maintain departments: metallurgy and extractive metallurgy.The latter can live in SME,TMS,AIST. To me, this decline means fewer faculty that specialize in mineral processing or extractive metallurgy. As mineral processing was absorbed into materials departments, those departments had to make sure professors could get dollars. With no more U.S. Bureau of Mines or any other clearinghouses for mineral processing research funding, departments tended to focus their hires on nanotechnology and computational modeling or whatever was popular and likely to get funded. Jon Kellar, South Dakota School of Mines: I trace a lot of this back to the elimination of the U.S. Bureau of Mines in 1996. One, it created the impression that mining and mineral processing were no longer critical to the national interest. Two, the bureau was an avenue for faculty to conduct research in support of the industry. The bureau also served to hire graduate students - the elimination made it harder for these students to get jobs outside of academia. Now we're left with no real pipeline for many graduate students and limited avenues to pursue research funding. Also around the same time there was a National Science Foundation program that funded research in extractive metallurgy. Unfortunatley, that went away, too. Mike Nelson, University of Utah: The age distribution of ME professors is like that in the industry, only more extreme. At Utah for example, of five tenure-track faculty, two are over 65 (72 and 68), one is 62, and two are much younger (34 and 26). A lot of experience will be retiring in the next few years. Often, the older professors have several years of industry experience, which the younger professors may lack. This creates two problems, first, replacing the retirees with qualified people, and second, getting those people through the university tenure system before they give up. Salary is major problem. I can hire a newly minted Ph.D. into a professorship at a nine-month salary of $80,000 to $85,000. A new engineering student with a B.S. can make $80,000 starting salary at a mining company. Recently, I was working with a faculty candidate who had a Ph.D. and had worked in industry for several years. He knew he'd have to take a pay cut to become a professor, but he wanted to teach and was willing to make that sacrifice. Then his company heard he was looking into the job and offered him a 20 percent raise. I couldn't compete. Courtney Young, Montana Tech: I am going to try and answer it in simple terms but, by no means, is it complete. Fifty years ago or so, schools across the country offered degrees in extractive metallurgy and/or mineral processing. Around that time, the demand for new materials was increasing; markets for ceramics, polymers, plastics, rubbers, advanced alloys, glasses, composites, etc. were taking off. Federal funding began to shift to these areas and research universities chased the money. Extractive metallurgy/mineral processing programs started to close but the nail in the coffin came when the Clinton Administration shut down the U.S. Bureau of Mines. It was the last source of major funding. A few programs held on as options in, or even changing their names to, chemical engineering, metallurgical and materials engineering, and materials science and engineering. To the best of my knowledge, Montana Tech, Colorado School of Mines, South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, Univeristy of Utah, Missouri S&T, and University Nevada Reno are the survivors. Montana Tech is in Butte, MT which sits at the crossroads of two interstates, but even then it is out of the way and small, with approximately 3,000 students. It has different challenges and opportunities than other schools in places like Denver or Salt Lake City. Issue: The crisis In mining education. An Industry perspective Jaye Pickarts, Rare Element Resources: We're a small mining company, with a seasoned management group. We try to do a lot of work with universities and utilize their skills. For example, we recently sponsored several students, both graduate and undergraduate. We sponsored a graduate processing student at Montana Tech, served on thesis committees, have supported many summer interns, and have provided both funding and materials for research. We support geology, processing, geophysical engineering programs, primarily in the Western U.S. and particularly those close to the mine itself, in northeast Wyoming, like South Dakota and University of Wyoming (which has geology and geophysics deptrtments). Most young engineers want to work in the big cities, they want to work with clean stuff, where they can have a social life - mining is typically remote and dirty. There's this social divide between the work ethic coming out of school vs. the expectations that the industry has for new engineers. It is just a different mindset. The solution? Getting young engineers out in the field early, to apply what they have learned and then to expand that knowledge from the challenges that only an operating mine can provide. Mick McCaslin, FLSmidth: We are largely focused on mineral processing, so take that into consideration. The number of schools that do anything with mineral processing is small - and the number of programs that are solid is very small. We do have a biased viewpoint. We have a certain focus. There are schools that have expertise outside that, but that doesn't help us. We look for schools that produce students who are ready to come to work and start producing immediately. Some schools are better than others - so what FLSmidth does is try to find those schools and then partner with them. The idea that some schools might disappear altogether - I see it differently. I worry that if we try to increase the number of schools too quickly, we'll risk just watering down what we already have. There are very few quality mineral processing faculty out there. We just don't have a lot of professors. In order to start a new program, you pretty much have to hire one away from an existing program. So now you have two watered down programs. Mike Garska, Simbol Materials: There are two main causes: The cyclical nature of the industry is one. Some years mineral processing grads don't have anywhere to go. This is followed by a reduction in the number of students seeking degrees in mineral processing, which means that when the industry rebounds and there are fewer students to fill positions. And mining schools are caught in a squeeze in which education is getting more expensive, state funding is dropping, and the departments get caught in the numbers game, because they're pretty small. Simbol is a materials company, so it's kind of a hybrid between mining and chemical engineering. It hasn't had a big impact until this year, because we're a startup. But now we are feeling it. It's much easier to find chemical engineers. However, it isn't ideal to fill mineral processing positions with chemical engineering people. The mindset is different and the way that they approach the job. Chemical engineers tend to overcomplicate things, wanting to get the highest purity, get a higher degree of control than is possible in the mining setting. Mining engineers recognize that you're not going to have as tight a control on the inputs. Some of the chemical engineers have a hard time accepting and understanding this. However, a lot of times it comes down to the school. Montana Tech, for example, really focuses on hands-on labs and internships, so that the students are really prepared. They're pretty much ready to step in and start doing something. A lot of the chemical engineers haven't had the summer internship experience. D.R. Nagaraj: Our experience at Cytec is similar in many ways to that of the whole industry, with perhaps an additional challenge. We are a chemical company. For close to a 100 years we have been providing innovative solutions to mining industry problems using our expertise in chemistry. We generally seek young scientists who have a good foundation in both chemistry and metallurgy. This was not at all a problem in the past. But over the past 20 or so years, it has been a big challenge to find such resources in the United States. There are, of course, young graduates with a strong competency in chemistry, but it has been difficult to attract them for careers in mining because of competition from biological sciences, nanotechnology etc. which are perceived to be glamorous. And we know very well how scarce metallurgists are in our country. There is not an adequate supply of them in the U.S. And we are not satisfied by the quality and completeness of education in metallurgy and mineral processing, particularly with an additional chemistry bent. There appears to be a mismatch between skills taught and skills needed by the practicing metallurgist. So we end up seeking highly motivated graduates, with specialization in either chemistry or chemical engineering, and train them internally. Even the occasional metallurgists that we grab require intensive training. This is a short term solution. It is not sustainable. It is as if we are doing the job of the university. This takes a huge investment on our part in terms of money and time (a minimum of five years). It does not stop there. There is also a significant investment made in retaining professionals who we trained. I hear a similar story from other companies. Mining research and education in our country used to be very strong until about the mid-1980s. And the majority of the schools supplied well-rounded graduates whoneeded very little additional training. Come to think of it, the companies had very knowledgeable mentors for these young recruits. All of this has significantly eroded over the years, and several factors have caused this. I strongly believe that we need the dedicated mining/mineral programs in the universities. Companies like Cytec would benefit greatly from such programs. What does the future of mining education look like? Mike Nelson: In the United States, there will still be mining engineering education, but there may be fewer mining schools. The schools and universities that are forward thinking will share graduate students and share subject experts, especially those with graduate-level expertise. Distance learning and online courses will be common. Also, U.S. schools will work a lot more with mining schools in developing countries. For example, there are about 6,000 mining students in Peru. Faculty members at Pontifica Universidad Católica de Peru (PUCP) tell me that they would like to expose their students to education and mining operations in other countries - especially in North America - to help prepare them for employment in the global mining industry. We signed an exchange agreement with PUCP that we hope will soon include mining companies, in which students will study and do an internship abroad - U.S. students in Peru and Peruvian students in the U.S. Mining engineering education has seen similar transformations in the past. At one time, the mining schools in Europe were dominant, with a well-established but largely theoretical approach to the discipline. When the Columbia University School of Mines was founded in 1864, its students were encouraged to spend their summers gaining hands-on experience in the mines in the U.S. and elsewhere, Columbia quickly became the world's premier mining school. Other schools in the United States, followed suit. I think we'll see another transformation, and mining engineering education in the future will have certain locations with recognized, focused excellence that cooperate, within the United States and internationally, to provide students with the theoretical and practical skills they need to work in an industry that operates worldwide. With welldesigned distance-learning courses, this approach will be even more practicable. Mary Poulton: I am a bit pessimistic about whether all programs will persist. Universities are becoming more and more like businesses, and they are aware, down to the penny, of the cost and benefit of each professor. The return on investment for mining faculty tends to be lower since the programs and departments are smaller. The research dollars are also less. With the greatly reduced state support, universities no longer have the cushion they had in the past to see mining programs through a protracted downturn. The government grants allow smaller indirect costs, and industry doesn't like paying indirect costs either. There are fewer student credit hours and fewer graduating seniors and graduate students per faculty member for mining departments. Money is the number one thing in neon lights. Another is more interdisciplinarity within schools and cooperation between schools, including shared courses, collaboration and distance courses. It's not a perfect solution, but it addresses some of the biggest problems. The scarcity of the kinds of well-rounded faculty we need is the biggest threat to mining education in the United States. The role of the Minerals Education Coalition Mary Poulton: It's this big continuum. Professors come from grad students, grad students come from undergraduates and undergraduates come from K-12 students. That's the challenge, and SME is still a very small organization. However, MEC is not just about K-12. It is also about getting parents and decision makers to understand the value of minerals and mining. It can also raise the awareness of jobs. That's back to those market forces again. If parents see the jobs out there, they will be more likely to push their kids toward mining. It's also the creation of knowledge that is important for the industry and the nation. What SME is able to do very well is bring that national need to the attention of decision makers - at both the state and federal levels. It's important to include the states, too. Most of the mining schools are state schools, state funded. The mines are in states. But that aspect is less emphasized. Plus, there is a crisis at in government, too. The U.S. Geological Survey, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and state agencies also need to replace large numbers of mining people who are retiring. The Mining Engineering Department at the University of Arizona currently has 117 undergraduate students and 50 graduate students, 18 of whom are Ph.D. candidates. The rest are masters candidates - most of them industry funded - working full time. There are nominally 10 faculty positions; two positions are nontenure track professors of practice focused on teaching.. There is a pressure on the tenure-track faculty. Tenure-track faculty members have about five years to prove themselves. They must develop industry contacts, get students, funding, and publish. If funding was easier to identify, it would be easier to get students and start producing publications. Fundamentally, the job of the tenuretrack faculty member is to create and disseminate knowledge and that takes time and money, both of which are in shorter supply for mining engineers than other disciplines. The subject of mineral resources is bigger than just mining. We've developed an interdisciplinary program in which we intersect with geosciences, economics, social sciences, business, health and law to create a broader talent pool for industry. This brings a bigger perspective to the table. Mining, metallurgy and economic geology are the hub in this hub-and-spoke model. With the spokes, you get a much bigger reach. Plus, we emphasize that mining is a global business; you need to be culturally competent and proficient in another language. We hire international faculty intentionally in order to emphasize the importance of a global outlook. * Samuel Frimpong, Missouri University of Science and Technology: The fundamentals and the core mining engineering courses will still be the same. However, the technological directions in industry will require students to be experts in other disciplines like automation, intelligent maintenance engineering and advanced technologies on board mining machines. Mining engineering education requires graduates to be knowledgeable in several areas, and it will continue to do so and even more. Currently at Rolla, we are discussing initiatives with electrical and mechanical engineering and computer science departments to introduce automation, robotics and intelligent maintenance courses into our program as minors and emphasis areas. New Ph.D.s: Where will they come from? Hugh Millen A well-respected industry executive recently told me that "a person would have to be insane to get a Ph.D. in this market," and he has a valid point. It is a major commitment of time and money to earn a Ph.D. degree and the remuneration of a starting assistant professor is often less than $90,000. Given that a traditional faculty candidate may have 5-10 years of professional experience, in addition to a Ph.D., this represents a major financial disincentive. As the salary disparity between industry and academia grows, this incentive will only become more pronounced. In the past, traditional academic programs relied on professors who went back to academia after some time in the industry. These individuals would often form the nucleus of the core faculty and would be surrounded by adjuncts and teaching faculty who were either retired or actively working in the industry. These part-time faculty members would then teach one or two courses per semester and provide an occasional seminar or lecture. This type of scenario provided a department's curriculum with depth and breadth, as well as a direct connection to industry and a means for providing student mentoring. Unfortunately, this type of program structure is quickly disappearing in most universities due to pressures associated with accreditation, national ranking and economics. Emily Sarver: We have flexibility right now if we wanted to make changes. But the program is working, and it's a little bit of not fixing what's not broken. ABET says it's working. It's also hard to commit to long-term changes without having the financial backing to keep it up. But there has been a change lately toward a more conscious development of leadership skills and of other soft concepts like ethics, sustainability, leadership. But how do you teach these? Furthermore, the mining industry is experiencing a lot of the same demographic shifts that the university is, with large numbers of the workforce retiring without enough people to replace them. I've graduated students who are VPs now. This provides great opportunities for this generation, but they're getting less experience. You didn't see this situation 20-30 years ago. As to replacing faculty, if all five retire at once, it wouldn't be possible to replace them with straight ME or MP backgrounds. There aren't enough Ph.D.s out there. And if they're there, they don't have the publication/research background. When the department hires and, more importantly, when the college hires, they work very hard to hire people who are going to succeed in the academic situation. It takes a certain kind of person, a certain kind of talent. It's not necessarily that the university frowns on industry experience - that would be a plus, really - or even that applicants don't have enough publications; it's the whole package. To be successful in academia and in getting tenure, a candidate has to be able to teach, advise graduate students and get research dollars, and do all three of them well. Running a research program is like running a company. There's a constant pressure to bring in research dollars. A global perspectiva Samuel Frimpong: Mining engineering has a strong global presence with a 3+2 program with the University of Botswana (UB). Under this program, UB graduates transfer into the third year at Missouri S&T after completing two years of fundamental and applied science courses to undertake a structured program leading to certification with the B.S. degree in mining engineering. Missouri S&T has also been selected by Saudi Arabia to help develop a two-year program to educate personnel for its emerging mining industry. We have also completed Memorandum of Understanding with universities in Indonesia, Mongolia, Dominican Republic, Peru and China to develop the 2+2 programs that bring diversified student population to Missouri S&T. Peru is one of the leading mining countries in the world, with 60 percent of its gross domestic product attributable to mining. In Peru, we are working with Instituto de Securidad Minera and other universities to strengthen mining engineering programming activities in selected core areas. It is important to note that the industry challenges are global. What is certain, though, is that the world still needs mining engineers and academia must partner with global industry and academia to develop and offer programs that respond to these needs. Jon Kellan There is the time and money to retrain. There is also the lack of Ph.D.s created. Eventually you'll run out of people to "train the trainers." You can only do this so long without long-term consequences - the research isn't being done. You lose that ability to innovate, to have breakthroughs in the industry. That work will shift to other countries. Other countries, especially those in South America, are more willing to invest in those academic programs because it's a larger part of their economy. It seems that some U.S. institutions are restarting mineral processing programs, but that is a difficult thing to do, given the circumstances. Mary Poulton: In the English speaking countries - Canada, Australia, South Africa and the United States - there are the same pressures, the same age demographic issues. These are less of an issue in India, China, Russia and Latin America, although Latin America does have trouble recruiting faculty, just because the industry is doing so well. So it's not just funding. It's demographics and it's the commodity price cycle. The United States is unique in the disinterest from the government in helping solve the problem. In Australia, the industry and government have stepped in and created a good model, a model that is difficult to emulate in the United States. We also have to consider that fewer and fewer metal and nonmetal mining companies are actually headquartered in the United States. When decisions are made at corporate headquarters in other countries, education support tends to go to those countries. Solutions - What can be done? Jon Kellan I think it's (a solution) happening, albeit somewhat slowly. There are people in the industry who are aware of the past neglect of academic support for the mineral industry. I believe the minerals industry needs to look 20 years down the road to see what the grand research challenges will be and articulate them to the federal government. For example, that long-term research approach happens routinely with the semiconductor industry. And when they do that, the federal government pays attention and federal agencies like the National Science Foundation support their research need to keep their industry on the cutting edge technologically. In this approach the research issues are fundamental in nature, and fit within the mission of agencies like NSF. Historically, in my opinion, the mineral industry has not thought in those terms, it's more along the lines of the near term research needs. Another option might be to bring back some revised version of the Bureau of Mines. In 2010, the National Research Council came out with the Critical Minerals and Metals publication, and that has seemed to attract the attention needed to spur fundamental research for the mineral industries. Emily Sarver: A funded fellowship program that can support Ph.D.s while training them in the skills they will need in academia: research and pedagogy. It's a goal to train Ph.Ds for the job of academia. Right now we are not able to focus on that as much as we need to be sustainable. We're fighting every day to keep research dollars. The money to fund that will most likely not come from the federal government. Possibly a private foundation or industry. The question is, does the industry support the undergraduate programs enough to support the faculty? Somebody has to value the program as a whole, and what this means is valuing and supporting faculty. In the past five years, we have produced Ph.D.s that want to stay in academia. But, for every academia-minded Ph.D. we produce, we produce one to two that go into something else. Mike Nelson: A new model for funding mining research is needed. Australia has a system that works well. For every ton of coal sold, the industry donates a few cents to a research fund. This generates $6 million in annual research funding. About 70 percent of Australian research dollars goes to university researchers; the rest goes to business, often small businesses and entrepreneurs. The industry in the United States is more diverse than Australia's, so it's historically been harder to set up cooperative research similar cooperative research funds. The current effort of the SME Foundation, spearheaded by SME, is right on the mark. The managed fund set up by the SME Foundation draws from lots of sources and offers a promising source of research funding for new academics. Dale Elifirits: Three things are in play. First is the salary situation. Professors aren't poorly paid. But at the start it's not much more than what you'd make as an entry-level engineer with a bachelor's degree in many cases. But I don't think it's as big an issue as two other things. Second is the morass of the tenure-track process. Tenure used to be a given if the new faculty member was diligent as a teacher with some research funded and papers published, and outreach to the industry. Now it is not. Critical issues are how much grant money you bring in and what specific journals accept and publish your papers. Teaching, research, service - these are not really important to the university in the same way that the money is. Third is how much of your life are you going to own? I think there's an idea that the life of a professor is a cushy, easy job, and it's not. As an engineer especially, you're going to be expected by the university to bring in the big bucks. Now if you contribute well to your company at Newmont or somewhere, you're going to advance in the company. In academia that is less true. This combination scares people. Hugh Millen Collaborate across institutions - sharing faculty and resources, especially in areas requiring specialized expertise. It's important to look for synergies between programs. In addition, academic programs can consort together in order to solicit company and government support. Programs should not try to compete with each other but rather, work together to achieve win-win propositions. Companies need to re-evaluate the way they contribute to universities. Many companies in the mining industry fail to contribute to higher education at rates typical of other industry sectors. This is particularly true of petroleum engineering. In addition, many fail to hire students or invest into academic programs when times are bad. That's when the programs go under or they lose significant student enrollment. When times are good and companies need engineers, the departments that they let fail or have significantly contracted are the major reasons for workforce shortages. It's conceivable that the United States could lose four or five programs in the next 10 years. While this is problematic, there are opportunities for the surviving departments to collaborate and reinvent themselves. The goal is to be proactive and be one of the surviving departments. Despite very different funding models, this situation is not unique to the United States. There used to be four very prestigious mining schools in the United Kingdom - now there is one. A host of other countries have experienced the same major consolidation. Program survival will be a function of collaboration between departments and establishing substantive industry partnerships. Mick McCaslin: It's hard. Is a 26-year old right out of graduate school going to be a good professor? Maybe not. You want someone with industry experience. But someone who's been in the industry 10 years is used to that paycheck. There are not a lot of easy answers. The industry has to get involved and find some way to make these [professor] positions more attractive. We have a vested interest in keeping these programs - how else are we going to have a workforce to hire? One solution is to look offshore. With immigration laws, though, this is difficult. on developing a training program for new mineral processing engineers at Freeport-McMoRan, less formal than what they have now. In the past few years, there has been a lot of employee stealing - had to provide a lot of fancy benefits to keep employees. Industry's roto Courtney Young: The industry has to help out and they do, often in extraordinary and different ways. It's pretty simple to say that we all benefit but the truth is, We do! They benefit by hiring an educated workforce. We have a job to provide them that educated workforce. We are also employed to do research. I am one of those lucky faculty who has been able to bridge the gap and do research at both the federal and industrial level. My federal research has often been tied to industry. With industry, I get to tackle problems that they just can't get to. Those projects have been done with senior design as well as undergraduate and graduate research. It's winwin. As another example, Newmont annually sponsors a faculty position at Montana Tech. It ensures that both of our mineral processing labs are offered along with several others including fire assay and processing of precious metals. With the latter, Newmont supplies about 15 guest lecturers from its labs in Denver and operations in Nevada. It's a course that is a student's favorite. Companies like Freeport-McMoRan, Cliffs NR, Nucor Steel, Rio Tinto/Kennecott, Gold Corp, Stillwater, FLSmidth, Barrick, etc. are reaching out to everyone, not just us. My apologies for only being able to mention a few companies, but my sincere thanks are offered to all that do. There is a strong need for endowed professorships on this campus and many others. Jaye Pickarts: If a student has the basic skills, they're going to learn it hands-on anyway. If I can get someone with the basic skills - it can be chemical engineering - we'll train them. When operations start [at the mine in WY], we'll probably hire local kids as much as possible. We'll only need about a half dozen professionals, but retention is better if we hire locally. When you can't hire from the United States, we hire internationally. It's hard - if there's a solution, let me know. Part of the problem is the dropping priority given to research. When I got out of school, all the big companies had their own R&D operations. That's not true anymore. We can't afford to maintain that. Many companies are developing their own training programs. Recently, Bob Seitz gave a talk The role of ABET: C. Dale Elifrits: First, it must be understood that ABET accreditation of a degree program is voluntary. The program and its host institution invite ABET to send a program evaluator as a part of a team of program evaluators to visit and evaluate the program's suitability to be accredited by, in the case of engineering programs, the Engineering Accreditation commission of ABET. The accreditation process is used to assure quality of the education for the graduates of a degree programs. These are accredited independently of the institution in which they reside. Degree-granting programs may be in a traditional department, or "housed" by something else, such as a multi-disciplinary department, or managed by a multi-disciplinary committee. But they must have dedicated faculty, budget, facilities, quality assurance, be able to deliver on their promised outcomes, and grant the degree. ABET was originally called Engineers' Council for Professional Development (ECPD) and was formed in the 1930s by mechanical, electrical, chemical, civil, and mining engineers to create baseline criteria that students would have to meet in order to be ready for the work force. These general criteria are basic standards that graduates must meet. This developed somewhat in concert with the state boards of licensure of professional engineers. ECPD changed its name to ABET in the late 1970s. Until the late 1990s, ABET degree program accreditation was essentially an audit process, based mostly on input numbers: number of classes, number of credits, numbers and kinds of courses, number of faculty, number of lab stations, etc. During the late 1990s, the accreditation process became focused more on the outcomes: can the students at the time of graduation actually perform at a particular level? ABET expanded around the same time to include computing and computer science and applied science degree programs. ABET accredits degree programs based on two related sets of criteria. First, there is are the general criteria, for which all engineers everywhere need to be proficient. Then, for most but not all disciplines, there are the discipline specific criteria. Mining engineering has these, as does geological engineering. Geophysical engineering does not. Mineral processing is only addressed by SME ABET volunteers by invitation.We examine mineral processing programs as our expertise is deemed to be appropriate. New Mexico Tech, for example, has a mining engineering based mineral processing program and is visited and evaluated by SME ABET volunteers. Also, international programs will sometimes request accreditation, but this, too, is by invitation only. To be ABET accredited, the faculty of the program must be of sufficient number to offer the coursework, so that students can make timely progress to graduation with their degree requirements met. There is technically no minimum number of faculty required, but they must cover the breadth of expertise. They must be able to follow through on what they promise in their program. * I will say: the students that are graduating are the best of the best. The professors are still turning out good students and good research. Mick McCaslin:The bottom line: money talks. Without some financial infusion, things are going to keep going downhill. Universities are focused on research. That's what has led them away from what we need from them. Industry needs to step up - and that means money. You can participate in other ways, in bringing in interns and sitting on committees and advisory boards, etc., but in the end, you've got to support the universities financially. It's still an uphill struggle. It's usually one or two people in the company who take this on and are committed to putting together funding, etc. I do see some evidence that there are efforts to tune into the problem and help. Industry is beginning to look at education as an investment in its future, not just a nice thing to do for the community, and that's a healthy thing. That will lead to money, time and energy being infused into the system. The payback is difficult to measure. It's difficult to slap a dollar sign on it. It's longer term. We're still tied to that five-year cycle. D.R. Nagaraj: There are multiple things that need to change. The universities need to step up and protect what they have. The university management has to make an important strategic decision to strongly support the existing departments to revive and rejuvenate mineral education rather than letting them linger in illhealth, which appears to be the current paradigm. Industry needs to help until the government can act - the government is very slow to act. Industry is our best hope for the short term. Industry has to come to the table as a coalition and make a commitment. The industry can also have a strong influence on the university management. Small industry grants to the university, say $5,000 to 50,000, does not help. The petroleum industry seems to do a much better job of funding schools. Universities in turn need to listen to the industry and understand its needs. They have to work closely with the industry to rejuvenate the curriculum and to improve the quality and completeness of education, not just providing some research. This is a great way to address the relevance and competencies issues. Together, they can then influence the government to support educational efforts. The universities could recruit industry professionals to aid in teaching important courses. It is unlikely in today's environment for a single, self-sustaining department would maintain all the competencies. So cooperation between departments in a university and between universities would be good, though this is not a trivial task, and I'm not sure how likely this would happen. Much easier perhaps is to work with industry to fill-in competencies. Industry folks are not subject to publish or perish, so they can truly focus on education, and they bring the practical stuff. Perhaps the degree programs could be four-plus-one or three-plus-two. In such a program the student spends one or two years in the industry as part of the degree. A more formal internship program can also be implemented. Then there is the educational material. The available textbooks are rather outdated. They have to be rewritten to reflect the 21st century. This may include uses of non-traditional for-education media. This would help in rebranding our field and attract more students. The high school and college textbooks in chemistry and physics are good examples to follow. The universities need to take a stand on the publication pressure and agree on a meaningful impact factor. The number of citations is not an indicator of the quality or relevance of the publication to the industry, at least not in our field. They have to fight the publication system a little - it has to come from a university coalition. The current university model is more focused on financial metrics than on education. There is so much pressure and demand on the faculty to raise money, pay huge overheads, fight the bureaucracy, and produce a large number of publications, that they have little time for research and education. We cannot afford to lose the remaining mining/mineral programs in the U.S. We need them and we must enrich them. Mining Engineering conducted interviews during the past year to get a range of thoughts about the state of mining education and the looming skills shortage. This section includes excerpts from these interviews.The full interviews can be found at Mining Engineering's website, www.me.smenet.org. Those who were interviewed for this project are: * Emily Sarver, assistant professor, Virginia Tech University. * Mary Poulton, distinguished professor and department head, Department of Mining and Geological Engineering, University of Arizona. * Mike Nelson, chair Mining Department, University of Utah. * Samuel Frimpong, professor and Quenon Chair, Mining Engineering Department, Missouri University of Science & Technology. * Courtney Young, professor, department head, Metals and Metallurgical Engineering Department, Montana Tech. * Dale Elifrits, visiting professor of geology, Department of Engineering and Environmental Geology, Northern Kentucky University, ABET representative. * Hugh Miller, associate professor, Colorado School of Mines. * Mike Moats, associate professor, Missouri University of Science and Technology. * Jon Kellar, professor, South Dakota School of Mines. * Jaye Pickarts, chief operating officer, Rare Element Resources. * Mick McCaslin, director, Mineral Testing Center, FLSmidth. * Mike Garska, senior process engineer, Simbol Materials. * D.R. Nagaraj, research fellow, Cytec. To read full interviews about the state of mining education visit www.me.smenet.org. (c) 2014 Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, Inc. |