Michael Gough
Eliza Watson
“We may be a small department, but that’s part of what makes it so special. We know each other. We support each other. And because of that, we thrive — both as students and as future professionals.”
The opinion piece penned by Trey Robison, Michael Gough, Eliza Watson and Travis Bach was in response to a recent U and Utah System of Higher Education discussion about cutting smaller academic programs. “Unfortunately,” wrote the students, “our department — mining engineering — was mentioned by name as an example of a discipline that could be subject to review under proposed enrollment thresholds.”
The concerned students took the news as an opportunity “to tell our story and to highlight what it really means to be a mining engineering student,” intoning that more than a major, the degree program was a “mission.”
Mining engineering majors at the U are immediately thrust into inter-disciplinary study that includes geology, engineering design, environmental stewardship, safety systems and more. Unlike perhaps other majors in the College of Science/College of Mining and Earth Sciences, mining majors experience hands-on training at mine locations that they are likely to land full-time positions at before graduation.
Some of these sites include aggregate pits like Kennecott Utah Copper along the Wasatch Front, coalfields in central Utah, goldfields in Nevada, trona mines in western Wyoming and “even remote mining camps in Australia.”
Trey Robison
Travis Bach
Mining majors at the U, which have quadrupled in annual enrollment since 2022, are the only thing you might consider “small.” Everything about mining is out-sized—not just the gigantic, complex operations in open-air pits and underground, but in the vaulting demand for materials to build a sustainable and secure future in the U.S. and beyond.
The students reminded us that mining is also an essential aspect of a green economy: without lithium and other critical and rare earth minerals, our lives and lifestyle would come to a screeching halt. To keep up with green economy demands, Denee Hayes BSME’02 has explained elsewhere that the world “will need to mine the same amount of copper between now and 2030/40 as we have in all of humanity.” And that is an example of just one metal. More than half of the periodic table goes into producing and running a cell phone. Furthermore, she reminds us, “anything in the periodic table needs to be mined.”
On more of a personal note, the students who authored the Tribune piece were keen to paint a picture of how being at the U in a small cohort of undergraduates quickens their group cohesion, a cohesion that immediately has global implications. “Recently, we launched a student mine rescue team — a multidisciplinary effort that brings students from across campus together to learn about emergency response in industrial settings.”
“Think of where the materials came from to construct the device on which you may be reading this,” concluded the mission-driven students. “[T]he foundation of the building in which you sit, the fertilizer that was used to grow the food you eat, your favored mode of transportation … the list goes on and on.”
By David Pace
You can read the Salt Lake Tribune opinion piece (paywalled) here.