Dr. Kate Willa Brown Requist

I am a firm believer in the notion that mining engineering is a career that transcends the usual blue collar/ white collar dichotomy found in other industries. It is rare to find career paths nowadays that mandate the cooperation of those without a university degree but plenty of professional experience, and those with a university degree who are just beginning to gain experience. This is something I see reflected in mining engineering students now, and something I saw in myself as an undergraduate in mining engineering. Incoming students in mining engineering generally come from one of two backgrounds: the student has either come from a long line of miners or has had no prior knowledge of modern mining. 

This naturally yields an interesting dichotomy between incoming students. Students arriving with a strong understanding of the mining process generally succeed as expected in mining courses because of their access to historical and institutional knowledge about mining. When a student arrives without prior knowledge of the mining life cycle, they must learn to very quickly navigate a culture that may be entirely foreign to them. Without discounting such a student, they most likely have skills in an additional field, such as mathematics or physics. Each student enters with their own skills and weaknesses, and this is why I feel it absolutely vital to meet each student exactly where they are at. With the addition of major public health events such as COVID-19, disparities in pre-college education have become more noticeable in the past few years. Every student has a right to have their needs met, and it is my goal to do so for my students at any opportunity possible.

I have found much success in the use of formative assessment occasionally during teaching. Formative assessment is a means of testing a student's knowledge through low-stakes assignments. For this, I prefer to assign small collaborative quizzes and projects to assess classroom capabilities. While formative assessments provide a strong way to measure class-wide competencies, they can only serve as a starting point. Experiential and active learning classrooms have been shown to increase material retention while meeting the needs of each student. By working in small groups, students are able to address their own deficiencies in some topics, because they have access to the help of their peers. 

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Experiential and active learning hinges on the notion that students have the ability to teach themselves, both individually and as a group. As humans, we are hard-wired for discovery. By providing the ability to discover in a classroom environment, we can help students to better build their own knowledge bases about the mining life cycle and value chain. In this way, education becomes a collaborative practice between the instructor in the student, allowing the instructor to be a guide rather than a traditional lecturer. Opportunities for hands-on experience and collaboration are critical in the teaching of mining engineering. When students can gain vital experience in the classroom, they leave courses with abilities they can turn around and use in their careers.

Higher education is often viewed as some pinnacle of difficult learning and can be a major source of stress for many students. My constant goal is to ensure that learning is enjoyable, valuable, and capable of meeting student's needs without overwhelming students. The use of collaborative work and formative assessments allow me to foster a classroom environment that is inviting for students of any educational or social background while introducing difficult and sometimes non-intuitive concepts.