While the Colorado School of Mines has its roots in geology and mining, most students today come to the Golden public university for its engineering programs. Traditionally, Mines has been known for producing graduates who command handsome salaries six months after graduation — an average of $66,400 in 2015 — and the culture of a suitcase school, deserted on weekends. That part has changed, says Brent Waller, director of residence life and housing. “Now it feels like a college.”
Indeed, the campus leadership is bent on transformation, from increasing the number of women enrolled — about one-third of the class of 2019 is female, and the school now boasts the largest college chapter of the Society of Women Engineers — to undertaking a building boom.
Mines also has beefed up its weekend and other social programming, along with efforts aimed at bonding students to the school. Among them: freshmen success seminars and learning communities organized around such themes as the visual and performing arts, being a first-generation student and tackling solutions to big engineering challenges.
[Check out other colleges and universities in Colorado.]
“The academics are really top-notch, but the students have fun too,” says Peter Consalvi, a senior from Hereford, Maryland, majoring in engineering physics. Fun ranges from Free Pour Fridays — which doesn’t involve beer, but rather smelting things for fun at the campus foundry — and Greek life to intramural athletics and the mountain sports available minutes from campus.
Still, says Gus Becker, a senior in engineering physics from Centennial, Colorado, the typical Mines student is a “nerd and proud.”
Through sophomore year, Orediggers are fed a steady diet of core requirements, typically entailing calculus I-III, differential equations, chemistry I-II, physics I-II, principles of economics and two classes in which students work in teams to solve open-ended design problems. Professors are very helpful inside and outside of class and “want you to succeed,” says Katie Schumacher, a recent environmental engineering grad from Murphy, Texas.
Students in most majors must do at least one summer of fieldwork; petroleum engineering majors might work in the Rangely Oil Field and geology students in geomorphic regions of Colorado, for example. Senior year wraps up with a capstone project.
As students increasingly have sought “to understand the intersection of engineering and society,” capstone projects have often taken a more socially conscious focus, says Kevin Moore, dean of the College of Engineering and Computational Sciences. And Mines is rolling out a humanitarian engineering degree.
[See which top colleges and universities are in the Centennial State.]
The changes notwithstanding, traditions are held dear. Freshmen bring rocks from their hometowns and hike as a class up nearby Mt. Zion, where they whitewash their rocks and place them into the huge “M” overlooking campus; students retrieve them upon graduation.
Career Day brings hundreds of employers to campus twice a year, and the three-day spring blowout known as “E (for Engineering) Days” features “the best fireworks show you’ll ever see in your life,” says Jennifer Jacobs, a 2016 graduate from Bremerton, Washington, majoring in computer science.
“The biggest complaint on campus is the food,” says Cody Watters, a senior in computer science from Colorado Springs, who adds that it’s getting better. Students are required to live on campus as freshmen but tend to move into the surrounding area thereafter.
There is housing and good food available in downtown Golden, described by one student as “a sleepy little town” 20 minutes from Denver. The Division II women’s soccer team made it to the 2014 NCAA Final Four, and the football team was co-champ of its conference in 2014.
Colorado College Road Trips:
— University of Colorado–Boulder
— University of Denver
— Colorado College
This story is excerpted from the U.S. News “Best Colleges 2017” guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.
More from U.S. News
College Road Trip: Colorado College
Take a College Road Trip to Colorado
Take a College Road Trip to the Deep South
College Road Trip: Colorado School of Mines originally appeared on usnews.com
