“Some people know from a really early age what they want to do,” says Frances Vallejo ’87. “I was not one of them.” But a summer program at Mines for minority high school students changed all that for the Pueblo, Colo., native.

Brock O’Kelley ’74 has seen the good times and weathered the bad ones at Molycorp’s Mountain Pass Mine, located 50 miles south of Las Vegas. He was there 22 years ago, when the mine ranked as the world’s largest single producer of rare earth metals. And he endured the dark period of the late 1990s and early 2000s, when a changing market and regulatory challenges slowed production to a trickle.

“When a kid has a bicycle … it’s liberating, it’s freeing,” says Dick Banks ’53, who has spent 15 years promoting safe cycling among elementary school children, imparting important life lessons at the same time.

You’re 60 years old. You’ve had a successful engineering career, spanning four decades and several continents, and you are retiring as president and chief operating officer of a mining company with a thousand employees. Businesses are clamoring for your expertise as an independent consultant, and job offers come in from South America and Africa. What

Geophysical engineering alumnus Eric Friedland ’86 has had an unconventional and challenging career path, most recently founding Peregrine Diamonds Ltd. His company is working to uncover what could be the most important diamond discovery in decades.

Durga Prasad Kar MS ’02, PhD ’10 earned his graduate degrees in economics at Mines. In 2003, he and his wife founded Alternative Development Initiative for Rural Engagement (ADIRE), a nonprofit working to improve the lives of the rural poor in India through appropriate technology, renewable energy and local capacity building.

Giving Life The decision to offer one of his kidneys for transplantation to any suitable recipient didn’t happen overnight. It came in stages for George Taniwaki ‘81, who is a software program manager and contractor on assignment with Microsoft. “A couple of people I worked with were kidney donors for people they were genetically related

Alumnus Manages Brown Expansion He’s completed plenty of tough assignments for the engineering division, but this is the toughest. Thankfully, he’s the one getting paid this time. Mines is spending $33 million on the 78,000-square-foot Brown Hall addition currently under construction, and mechanical engineer Scott Hodgson ‘03 is the person responsible for overseeing about $10

At space camp in high school, James Johnson ’03 was disappointed that he wasn’t selected to be an astronaut. Instead, he was put on mission control. He had a blast (pun intended). “It was kind of foreshadowing, I guess,” says Johnson, who today is a flight controller for the space shuttle program at the Johnson

Jack and Karen Krug have escaped to a world of their own. Tucked away in the woods of Whidbey Island, Washington on a small pristine farm, they are enjoying an  early retirement that seems as far removed as it could be from their high-flying careers in the oil industry. Jack ’70, MS ’71, PhD ’77,

Four sisters. One apartment. And one fiercely competitive, male-dominated engineering school. It could be the premise for an MTV reality series, but to Teresa, Tamara, Tawnya, and Katheleen Muhic (left to right in photo), it was simply real life at Colorado School of Mines. All four sisters graduated with engineering degrees in the eighties –

Stewart Chuber ’52 worked in the oil and gas field for 10 years before he found a mentor. When he did, he benefited immensely, and went on to flourish: With a PhD from Stanford University, Chuber has held senior positions in a number of oil and gas companies, lectured around the country, and since 1978,

Bryan Lees ’85 makes his living from mining. But he’s not hauling hundreds of tons of dirt out of a mountain; instead, he’s carefully chipping away at the walls of old mine shafts searching for gems and minerals. The owner of a world-renowned mineral specimen and gemstone mining company, Lees has collected rocks since he

“Worldwide energy demand is expected to double in the next 20 years,” says Frank Gibbs ’84, PhD ’98, before asking, “Where will it come from?” He believes the answer, at least in part, is nuclear power. And to help Mines play a significant role and establish its Nuclear Science and Engineering Program, he is contributing

At the intersection of art and technology, where mathematical computer modeling meets lighting design in the animated movie industry, you’ll find Chris Springfield ’91. The artist/engineer just wrapped up three and a half years of work on the recently released computer-animated Disney movie, Bolt. Springfield supervised the lighting on a number of scenes, overseeing, as

The moment of inspiration came one drab day on the 26th floor of a Holiday Inn in Wichita, KS. An Amoco research engineer at the time, Roger Rueff ’78, MS ’83, PhD ’85 had been ruminating on an idea for a play for several months. “I found myself in a hospitality suite with a salesman

U.S. nuclear energy is likely to grow rapidly over the next decade, and AREVA, the world’s largest nuclear energy technology provider, is expected to play a major role in this growth. If so, then as strategy director for AREVA’s North American division, Mari Angeles Major-Sosias ’85, MS ’92 could play a key role in reshaping