Butte, Mont. – Jared Bartel arrived at Montana Tech last month for a final semester that will take him to graduation and a job as a mining engineer.
Six months ago, Bartel firmed up a position with a Wyoming coal mine where he will be paid upward of $50,000 a year. His career aspirations remain as strong as ever despite the Utah mine disaster that focused new attention on the dangers of extracting resources from rock.
“There are inherent risks with mining,” said Bartel, 23, of Hamilton in southwestern Montana. “But it’s not nearly as dangerous as many jobs out there.”
His attitude was common among freshmen and upperclassmen alike as mining students arrived on the Tech campus in late August while six men remained trapped in Utah’s Crandall Canyon coal mine after a cave-in Aug. 6. Another collapse, 10 days later, killed three rescuers and injured six.
Officials at Montana Tech and mining schools elsewhere say the Utah disaster is unlikely to chill interest in a field brimming with opportunity in areas such as mine development, planning and administration. They say students tend to see themselves as invincible, and mine accidents reinforce the importance of their work as engineers, jobs that can send graduates underground alongside miners.
Mining fatalities increased 19 percent last year, in part because of West Virginia’s Sago Mine explosion that killed 12 people, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Oil and gas extraction is included in the mining category and accounted for the most fatalities.
Looking at broad industry sectors, the department found mining trailed the agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting group in deaths per 100,000 people employed.
Ron Brummett, career services director at the Colorado School of Mines, said job prospects for mining engineers are the best he’s seen since he arrived at the Golden campus in 1993. Last year’s class had a 92 percent placement rate upon graduation, and within six months the rate was 100 percent.
In the 2006-07 academic year, the 13 accredited schools conferred about 130 bachelor’s degrees on students who majored in mining engineering.
What happened in Utah “underscores the need to know your stuff” and is no deterrent to a career in mining, said Janet Robinson, who at age 50 is a freshman in Montana Tech. Previously a loan processor, she became interested in the mining program after visiting the campus with her son, a freshman in a different program.
Another student, Heather Buettner, said the Utah disaster colored her outlook, at least a bit. Buettner, who transferred out of the school’s nursing program and into mining this year, said she won’t work in an underground coal mine when she is an engineer a few years from now.
