Mining programs at the University of Alaska Fairbanks stand to benefit from the recent creation of an enlarged College of Engineering and Mines, the Alaska Minerals Commission heard at its meeting in Fairbanks Sept. 28. John Aspnes, dean of the college, and Gang Chen, a professor of mining engineering, explained to the commission how UAF is doing its bit to overcome the mining industry's workforce shortage.

When UAF's various science, engineering and mathematics departments came together to form the College of Engineering and Mines on July 1, 2004, some in the mining community expressed concern that mining and geological engineering would be absorbed and disappear. "The university has done everything it can think of to assure the constituency that it's not going to happen," Aspnes told Mining News. The college now has more financial flexibility and its faculty and students can participate in major interdisciplinary research projects, he added.

At the Institute of Northern Engineering, which is now a research unit in the College of Engineering and Mines, one of the graduate student projects is an attempt to find a way to produce a coarser grind of Alaska's low rank coal to increase efficiency at power plants. As the low rank coal is highly reactive, the hypothesis is that it does not have to be ground as finely as other coals for combustion. Other projects include looking at the possible expansion of the Alaska railroad to Canada and work on recovering minerals from the sea bed.

Still few mining engineering students

"There is more visibility for the engineering programs - they're not as diluted as they were before," Aspnes said. "The mining side is very much in evidence." However, the number of mining engineering students is still small compared with other majors, he acknowledged. Between 2000 and 2004 there have consistently been 15-22 undergraduate students majoring in mining engineering, while civil engineering majors have increased from 80 to 114 in that period, electrical engineering is up from 54 to 92, and mechanical engineering is up from 61 to 81.

Geological engineering has fared even worse than mining engineering, with numbers down to 17 in 2004 from a five-year peak of 29 in 2001. Petroleum engineering enrollment has stayed fairly steady at around 20 students each year. On the graduate side, five students enrolled in master of science degrees in mining engineering in 2004 (up from zero in 2000), but there were none in mineral preparation engineering that year and only three in geological engineering.

"The main things that can be told to students are that there is a very substantial need for people in the field, and the financial rewards are quite excellent," Aspnes said. "Mining today is not like it was 75 years ago. There are a lot of hi-tech components, there is reclamation, there is a whole variety of areas of work."

Recruiting coordinator planned

The College of Engineering and Mines plans to hire a full-time recruiting coordinator to organize the faculty presence at high schools and college fairs. Aspnes has been going to the West Coast and has found that schools in Washington don't have room for all the prospective students, he said. On the other hand, many high school students in Alaska just want to get out of the state. "The challenge is convincing people that the Fairbanks climate isn't that bad, including people in southern Alaska, who are potentially turning their backs on an incredible educational opportunity. I'd stack up our graduates against any engineering graduates in the country."

Aspnes has been in Fairbanks 27 years and calls it one of his most favourite places on the planet. In the past decade the climate has become less harsh, he said.

UAF has made a concerted effort to retain Alaska Native students. The Alaska Native Science & Engineering Program, which started at the University of Alaska Anchorage, has been active in Fairbanks for four years and the College of Engineering and Mines now has 75 Native students with a 95-percent retention rate, according to Aspnes. The national average retention rate for Native Americans is under 30 percent.

The American Indian Science & Engineering Society chapter at Fairbanks has won national recognition, and between them the programs for Native students provide scholarships, tutoring, study groups, internships and team-building sessions. But the challenge to bring students of all backgrounds into engineering programs begins at home, with parents, Aspnes believes. "Young people zero in on what they want to do earlier than the last two years of high school," he said. "It's my perception that there could be more done to encourage students at high school to excel and take science and math more seriously."

Many of the students and faculty in UAF's engineering departments are from India and China - more from India currently, as it is getting harder to leave China. "On average people in other parts of the world tend to have a little bit more of a work ethic," Aspnes said. "It'd be neat if it were 'cool' in the U.S. to do science and math at college."