Welcome

Greetings from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Colorado School of Mines. ME@Mines is the largest department on campus, with over 1,300 undergraduate majors and over 160 graduate students. The department is experiencing a period of rapid growth, and many exciting things have happened over the last year in terms of teaching, research and service.

Mines is recognized for its excellence in education and research. Of particular note is that Popular Mechanics recently choose Mines as its top science and technology college in the Rocky Mountain region. Labeled “The Most Eccentric Engineering School in the West,” Mines was one of seven universities across the United States and Canada to be highlighted by the magazine. Mines was also recently ranked second in the nation by The Wall Street Journal for schools that do the best in combining scholarly research with classroom instruction.

Mines bachelor of science graduates in mechanical engineering continue to be highly sought-after by industry. For the academic year 2016-2017, ME@Mines graduated 241 BSME students who have earned starting salaries averaging over $61K/year. In that same time frame, 37 MS and 8 PhD students graduated as well. ME@Mines’ biggest employers are in the aerospace and consulting industries, with over 142 different companies, national laboratories and universities hiring our student graduates. Additionally, 171 different companies hired Mines ME students as interns during the last academic year. These are outstanding employment metrics for
ME students!

ME@Mines students continue to earn accolades in a number of national and international student competitions. Perhaps most impressive was the performance of the DiggerLoop team competing in SpaceX’s Hyperloop challenge in August 2017. The Mines team was one of only 24 national and international teams selected to go to the finals at SpaceX’s Hyperloop track in California. This year, the DiggerLoop team returns (one of the 20 teams world-wide selected to compete) with an improved pod design and new criteria for the competition. This is just one of several design and competition teams for involvement as a mechanical engineer.

Research is on an upward trajectory in the ME Department, exceeding $6 million per year. ME@Mines’ research growth is being advanced by a number of centers that call ME home: The ADAPT Center (Alliance for the Development of Additive Processing Technologies), the Continuous Casting Consortium and the Colorado Fuel Cell Center. All the ME faculty are actively engaged in groundbreaking research as reflected by the significant publications generated each year.

If you are ever in the Golden, Colorado, area and want to visit ME’s rapidly growing department, please stop by. I’ve seen incredible changes in ME since joining the faculty in 1994, and if it’s been a few years since you’ve visited campus I think you’ll be amazed as well!

John Berger
Department Head