Penn State is one of 14 schools in the U.S. Department of Energy’s new program that aims to double the number of graduates in mining and related fields with as much as $100 million in total funding the schools will be eligible to apply for.
Audrey Robertson, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, spoke about the program Tuesday as part of her tour of the Materials Characterization Lab on the University Park campus, where she saw the work students and faculty are already doing in the field.
“We have … several scanning electron microscopes here," explained faculty member Maureen Feineman. “This is the newest one, so it’s the one I’m going to show you. It’s also one we bought specifically to use for critical minerals work in mining, engineering, minerals processing, assessment."
Increasing the number of people in the United States who can work with those critical minerals — which are used in everything from technology to defense systems — is the focus of the new federal program, known as PROSPECT: Providing Opportunities for Specialized Education in Critical Technologies.
“We are at a crisis in our supply chain," said Robertson, pointing to the number of mining engineers as one example. She said 126 graduated in the United States last year compared to about 6,000 in China.
“We are at a place where we have a significant need for talented, educated students to come out of these great American universities with the skills necessary, not just to mine critical resources, but to process, to qualify and then to create new materials," Robertson said.
Penn State and the other accredited mining schools will be able to apply for funding through PROSPECT. The money can go to scholarships and other initiatives to attract students to the field.
John Mauro, interim dean of Penn State's College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, said the program will be “transformational.”
“I think a lot of this is about changing the public's perception about mining, too, because I think when most people think about mining, they have this image from maybe 100 years ago, and it's actually so far beyond that now," Mauro said. "And the reason is because of all the advances made by scientists and engineers to make mining so technologically advanced and safe.”
