Metallurgist Celebrate Centennial In June the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering welcomed alumni and friends of the department to a centenary reunion. "Looking back through the old graduating records, it appears that the department awarded its first degree in metallurgical engineering in 1890. This seemed like a good opportunity to celebrate 100 years of awarding metallurgical degrees at Colorado School of Mines and an ideal excuse for alumni, faculty and graduate students to get together," according to Dr. John J. Moore, professor and department head. Mines is currently graduating 30 to 40 undergraduates a year with a bachelor of science in metallurgical and materials engineering. This level has been relatively constant over the last few and is all the more remarkable when one recognizes that student numbers in metallurgical and materials departments are decreasing. "We have found a very high demand for our undergraduates over the last few years and we are extremely keen on increasing our recruitment through this program." "At the graduate level we currently have 85 graduate students split between masters and doctoral programs. Over the past five years or so, 95 percent of the students in the undergraduate program and 75 percent of the graduate students who have graduated from the department have been American citizens which is remarkable since it is not uncommon for most graduate programs in the United States to have fewer than 50 percent U.S. citizens," Moore explained. The department currently has 16 faculty who are extremely active in both research and teaching. In 1989 the faculty were successful in attracting almost $2 million in research funding from federal, state and industrial sources, and Moore anticipates exceeding this level in the next year. Academic programs With a look to the future, the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering has made a strong commitment to provide both undergraduate and graduate programs in ceramic engineering and has broadened its role to include composite, intermetallic and advanced materials, while reinforcing its traditional strengths in metallurgy. By broadening the academic base while still maintaining the department's traditional strengths in processing materials, a new undergraduate program is now in a transition period. Again, the emphasis is on processing materials whether they be metals, intermetallics, composites, advanced materials, or ceramics. Seniors graduating from the department in 1991 will be the first to graduate through this new program. "We are particularly pleased with this new course curriculum with its increased emphasis on generic processing principles of materials. What is even more pleasing is the recent report from the National Research Council on ‘Materials Science and Engineering for the 1990s - Maintaining Competitiveness in the Age of Materials'. The main conclusion of this report was that there needs to be more emphasis on synthesis and processing of materials at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in the United States." "We feel that our new curriculum and broadened research program addresses this area of national importance," said Dr. Moore. Research areas The research areas can be broadly categorized into the four main research centers, which operate within the department. The Advanced Steel Processing and Products Research Centers is supported by 19 North American companies, which are either steel producers or steel users. This center has been used as an ideal model in the United States for industry-university cooperative research centers. The research encompasses processing steel from casting to finished product. The Center for Welding and Joining Research continues to enjoy an excellent reputation with respect to the metallurgy of welding and has also extended its role in joining ceramic-metal components, ceramic components and composite materials. The W.J. Kroll Institute for Extractive Metallurgy is not only concerned with conventional mineral processing, pyro, hydro and electro metallurgical extraction, but also in the chemical processing of ceramic precursors such as combusion synthesis of ceramic and intermetallic composite materials, and in recycling and environmental engineering of materials. The Colorado Center for Advanced Ceramics was initially established through funding from Coors Ceramics Company, which has also established an endowed chair in ceramic engineering in the department. Professor Dennis Readey, who was previously department head of ceramic engineering at Ohio State University, is the first Herman F. Coors Professor in Ceramic Engineering. August 1990