"I have built several projects in developing nations and have found it rewarding," says Mike Robb of New Mexico. He has been in the mining business for more than 30 years.
"A good steady job and a community improvement program can result in people's standard of living going way up. Most companies have an active community improvement program. For all practical purposes, you adopt the local village," he says.
"Taking a project from concept to operation is very rewarding. My career has been pretty well split one-third technical, one-third supervision and one-third management.
"To be a successful manager, you must have the technical background and experience to evaluate what is going on, and you must have the supervision experience to know that it is not as easy as it looks on paper. They all have their rewards and frustrations, but management is to me the most rewarding."
Among the hardest decisions he's had to make as a mining engineer was deciding to close a mine and lay off the workers. "Disrupting people's lives is not fun," he says.
"The field definitely needs individuals that will take the technology beyond the problems of production and environment," says Edward E. Hollop of Florida. He has almost four decades of experience in mining engineering.
He has designed mines, carried out health and safety evaluations, taught at the college level and worked all over the world. He says to set your sights very high.
"The Colorado School of Mines has just started a space research center," he says. "The only way to live in space for long periods of time is to locate a permanent source of oxygen beyond the Earth. The present potential source is limonite on the moon. It will take mining engineers to plan, develop and execute a mining operation on the moon in the near future to obtain the oxygen trapped in the mineral."
Kathryn Rogers graduated in 1995 with a bachelor's degree in engineering. She is currently working on her master's degree in mining engineering. She got into engineering because she was good in math and science and liked earth science.
She started out in general engineering and then took to mining. "At 18 or 19, that's a fairly tough decision to make," she says. She was also interested in English and the arts, but felt that engineering gave her more options.
Her first jobs in mining engineering were hands on. She worked at mines in drilling, blasting and testing.
Now, she works more in the office. She is designing and trying new products. She uses statistical tools and applies them to processes (such as lead smelting) to make them more efficient. She describes this as one of her favorite aspects of her work.
Most mining engineers are men, but there are a number of women. Rogers works with seven other women at the mine. "We have never had any problems with discrimination," she says.
She says this a great career for people who like the outdoors. "Mining towns are perfect for camping, fishing, hiking and snowmobiling." She and her boyfriend, who is also a mining engineer, are very happy with their work. Someday, they might consider going overseas to work. "I'd love to see Ireland, Australia, Indonesia, Peru or Chile."
John Mossop is a professor of mining engineering. He started out in the asbestos industry until the identification of its health hazards changed everything. He then went into lead and zinc, and after a metals downturn, into limestone. Then he got into consulting, until he took his current position.
He first got into the field because he was good at math and someone suggested engineering. He started in electrical engineering, but then he took a summer job at a mine and liked it. "Miners are pretty independent. There's not usually a boss looking over your shoulder every day. You get to make a lot of decisions, especially in the smaller towns."
His tasks included planning and investigating the deposits and how to mine them.
This field is always encountering new challenges. "The industry is not static. It never stands still. There's always new equipment and new mining methods," says Mossop. It has moved from manual labor to mechanization to automation and it is still a continually changing industry.
And just because mining engineering is an evolving field with many opportunities for change, moving around doesn't mean you have to give up a personal life. "A mining town is a good place to bring up a family. I did it," says Mossop.
"You get to know an awful lot of people. It's sort of a fraternity, a very friendly environment. There's good camaraderie amongst mining people."