Dr. Terry Parker Provost and Executive Vice President September 6, 2012
Dear Mines Community:
I have two announcements that are provided within this email.
In the past 13 months, we have formed two colleges at the Colorado School of Mines; the College of Engineering
and Computational Sciences was formed in August of 2011 and the as-yet unnamed college that contains Chemical
and Biological Engineering, Chemistry, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, and Physics was formed at the
beginning of August of this year. I am pleased to announce today the formation of the third, and we believe, final
college at CSM.
This college will have “earth resources” as its anchor and will contain many of the founding departments for the
school. The departments within this newly formed college are: Economics and Business, Geology and Geological
Engineering, Geophysics, Liberal Arts and International Studies, Mining Engineering, and Petroleum Engineering.
Four of these departments have an obvious and direct tie to earth resources. Economics and Business has a less well
known but very important tie to earth resources because of its Mineral Economics degree. Liberal Arts and
International Studies, although it serves a critical role in the delivery of Humanities and the Social Sciences for the
overall campus, also is home to the Master of Political Economy of Resources degree. Our expectation is that this
new college, with its strong earth resources focus will promote excellence in research and degree programs, will
produce stronger collaborations across departmental lines, increase administrative effectiveness and will promote the
departments within the college. As always our goal is the creation of “programs of distinction” where the education
and research opportunities offered by the college and departments are well known within these fields, produce
enhanced reputations, and ultimately generate a flow of quality students and research programs that place us in the
top tier of institutions.
As with the two previous colleges when they were formed, we have not initially named the new college and will
formally ask the faculty in the college and faculty senate to participate in the choice of a name.
Prof. Ramona Graves has agreed to assume the role of college Dean. Ramona received her Ph.D. in Petroleum
Engineering from CSM and has been teaching on the campus since the middle of the 1980’s. She became
department head in 2007 and has been tireless in her promotion of the PE department. Under her guidance as
department head, the undergraduate population has grown significantly, the department has strongly embraced the
research and graduate education agenda, and she has been instrumental in shepherding Marquez Hall off the drawing
board and into a fully functional (and very impressive) reality. We have appointed Professor Graves with the
unanimous support of the Department Heads in the college. This appointment will be reviewed, in a manner that
includes input from all aspects of the institution, after a two year period and our current intent is to open a formal
search for the Dean of the new college sometime during the 2013 calendar year. Please join me in congratulating
Prof. Graves on her appointment as Dean.
In the coming weeks we will identify the home for the Dean of the college, until that time, she will continue to
“camp out” in Marquez Hall.
In all of our endeavors, the goal is to continue to support excellence in education and research that supports our
engineering and applied science activity within focus areas of Earth, Energy, and the Environment. As always,
thanks to the faculty, students, and staff on the campus for all that you do for Mines.
All the Best!
Terry Parker
Provost and Executive Vice President
1500 Illinois Street Golden, CO 80401 MINES.EDU T 303‐273‐3320 F 303‐273‐3040