I arrived in Leoben Monday last and have spent the week settling into my new home for the next five months. I can already tell I will love it here.

I have been in Austria almost a week and it seems like just yesterday I was frantically trying to pack up my life into two huge suitcases and two carry-on bags. Everyone in Leoben has been very friendly, and through smiling, pointing and a combination of English and German, this town and culture are making more sense each day.

Seven new faculty members joined Mines in the spring semester, including three department/division heads.

I’m Alyse, a junior in petroleum engineering. One week from today I will be getting of the train in Leoben, Austria, ready to get settled in before starting the semester.

After months of running back and forth across campus getting professors to sign paperwork approving classes, meeting with the international office, and trying to figure out exactly how this whole study abroad thing is going to work out, I finally have plane tickets to Europe! I am so looking forward to spending spring semester working on my petroleum engineering undergraduate degree at Montanuniversität in Leoben, Austria.

Kirstin Volpi comes back to Mines, Priscilla Nelson becomes the first woman to head the Department of Mining Engineering, and more news from Mines.

Nathan Torres ’03 and Cooper Best ’09 are helping shore up The Crystal Mill, an oft-photographed Colorado landmark entered in the National Register of Historic Places.

George S. Ansell
Edmund R. Blakeman ’51
Robert F. Bowie ’42
Hamdi A. Bozbag ’42, MS ’43
Victor Bychock ’42
Charles W. Campbell ’47
Thomas J. Carney ’51
Thomas H. Cole ’43
David L. DeGiacomo ’73, MS ’80
Richard F. Dewey ’43
Thomas G. Fails Jr. ’54
Raymond R. Gutzman
Richard B. Hohlt ’47, MS ’48
Ed T. Hunter ’53
Keith Douglas Jung ’53
George H. Kennedy
Richard L. Klebe ’51
Robert J. Knox ’49
Gerald P. Nelson ’56
Kent D. Peaslee ’78
Thomas J. Ryan ’53
Howard V. Scotland III ’84
Peter Sluyter ’92
Daniel J. Talley ’95, MS ’97
James A. Wood ’63

From his third-floor office window in the historic Guggenheim Hall at the center of campus, President M.W. Scoggins can see the future: To the south, prospective students and visiting alumni will be greeted at a sleek new Welcome Center. To the east, a state-of-the-art academic and research building will offer future physicists and engineers new labs and classrooms. To the north, at a new athletics complex, students, faculty and alumni will come together to cheer the Orediggers to victory. On evenings and weekends, the university will bustle with life, with more students living on campus than ever before, expanded recreational programs, and more diverse cultural and intellectual opportunities to complement Mines’ highly technical curriculum.

This past summer, the world’s largest-diameter tunneling machine, “Bertha,” went into action digging a tunnel beneath downtown Seattle to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which was damaged in a 2001 earthquake. Professor Mike Mooney’s students made contributions to the design of the Seattle tunnel as part of their project design course.

Thanks to a $3.5 million gift from Cimarex Energy, Mines has established the F.H. “Mick” Merelli/Cimarex Energy Distinguished Department Head Chair in Petroleum Engineering—the first of its kind at Mines.

Neuroscience, Memory, and Learning
Programming the Finite Element Method
Too Hot to Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste

Two days after graduating with a doctorate in mechanical engineering, Jennifer Labs ’97, MS ’01, PhD ’04 was running her own business. This is what aviators call a “steep takeoff angle”—an apt metaphor for Labs’ company, Paradigm Shift Solutions, which designs and manufactures cockpit simulators for pilot training schools.

How can light be manipulated to slice a clean incision in the fragile lens of a human eye? Or to create three-dimensional videos of processes deep inside the brain? Or to carve a tiny laboratory on a microscopic chip?These are not the questions Jeff Squier ’84, MS ’86 was pondering in 7th grade, when he wrote the words “optical physicist” on a questionnaire asking what he wanted to be when he grew up. “Really, I just liked the idea of playing with light,” he recalls. Thirty-nine years later, that boyhood fascination has led the Mines physics professor and researcher to not only ask such questions, but also answer them by designing and building ultra-fast lasers that can cut, image and micro-machine in ways never before possible.

Celebrations at this year’s Homecoming had a special Mines twist, with a unique Field Day event replacing the traditional parade. Students, alumni and the broader campus community applied their engineering skills and athleticism in competitions like the shaving cream cheese puff toss and egg-football balance.

Seven years into his presidency, with plenty of milestones on record, a capital campaign in full swing, and some big changes on the horizon for Mines, we recently sat down with President Scoggins for an informal Q&A. Partly retrospection, partly introspection and partly forward-looking, the conversation that follows will be of interest to all those who support the growth and success of Mines, and are curious to learn more about its president.

CSMAA awarded the Fritz Scholarship this fall to petroleum engineering students Lyle Hanson, Dustin Stevens and Edward Wolfram, all of whom expect to graduate in May 2015. Administered by CSMAA, the scholarship was established by Duane ’51 and Marcine Fritz (both deceased) and is awarded to Colorado residents majoring in either petroleum engineering or geology.

In honor of Senior Day and what might possibly have been the final football game to be viewed from the 91-year-old grandstands at Campbell Field, the Orediggers soundly defeated the Chadron State Eagles 23-0 on Saturday, November 16, finishing the season with an 8-3 record.

Going inland to a landlocked state to earn a graduate degree seems like an odd choice for members of the U.S. Coast Guard, but the program’s alumni report they take valuable skills back into the service.

In addition to welcoming an outstanding freshmen class this fall, Mines also welcomed a remarkable group of new faculty. Learn more about their backgrounds and specialties.

In September 2013, Colorado School of Mines launched the most ambitious campaign for private support in the university’s 140-year history. To complement our feature story about the Transforming Lives campaign, we share this short video from the Colorado School of Mines Foundation.

The Colorado School of Mines community certainly has a lot to celebrate: After receiving a record number of applications, Mines welcomed its most academically accomplished class on record in August, research funding and private giving both broke records for the second year in a row, a major new residential and dining facility is under construction, and a new capital campaign has been launched, which includes ambitious plans for infrastructure development, and faculty and student support.

Instead of a parade, before the Homecoming 2013 football game commenced, about 200 members of the Mines community competed in the Oredigger Challenge, in which teams competed on a variety of absurd, messy and awkward activities

In “The Face of Petroleum Engineering,” [summer 2013], Ramona Graves’ comments about the Division of Liberal Arts and International Studies struck a deep chord of disappointment. As a proud alumnus of the Petroleum Engineering Department who took full advantage of the educational, artistic and enrichment opportunities provided by LAIS, I felt her answer didn’t do justice to the important contribution the division makes to the Mines campus.

Mines student Matthew Mischo (left) has been selected to receive the ROTC Legion of Valor Bronze Cross Award, which is given annually for achievement of scholastic excellence in military and academic subjects.

Surpassing all previous years, the 2013 incoming class was the “most academically prepared undergraduate class to date,” according to President Scoggins.

Everyone who’s participated in the M-Climb remembers it. How does 2013 compare with your experience?

Successfully manipulating the DNA of bacteria so they fluoresce under ultraviolet light would have rocked the bioscience community a few decades ago. Today, it’s an intriguing, though straightforward, procedure built into an innovative freshman biology course launched this fall at Mines.

This spring, a group of Mines students representing Engineers Without Borders-USA traveled to the small community of Los Gomez in Nicaragua to complete a pedestrian footbridge over the frequently flooded Rio Ochomogo River.

Gerald R. Bond ’50 — January 11, 2012 Jack D. Gray ’52 — June 9, 2011 Jeffrey J. Knaebel ’63 — January 26, 2011 Jay L. Kratz ’63 — November 4, 2009 Todd M. Lasnik ’82 — September 29, 2012 Christopher K. Loomis ’69 — March 7, 2010 LouiS w. Minturn ’37 — November 25,

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