Economic Impact

Colorado School of Mines, our students, faculty and staff make a significant economic and social impact in our communities. Consider these key facts:

The average starting salary of graduates with a bachelor’s degree in 2008 was $61,600.
In a recent survey completed by PayScale Inc., the starting salary of Mines graduates ranked 22 in the nation, and first within the midwest and west regions.

Faculty at Mines received $41.5 million in sponsored research awards during the 2008 fiscal year.

More than 50 percent of research conducted at Mines is sponsored by industry and other enterprises in the private sector.
In general, research grants create jobs — 60 percent of research awards provide salary support.
Each $1 of research money brought into the school generates $2 of spending in the regional economy through direct and indirect spending effects.

Research activities at Mines also create jobs through technology transfer and business spin-offs. Recent examples include:

MicroPhage: a company developing proprietary and patented bacteria detection technologies commercialized in worldwide clinical markets.
MetaFluidics: a company developing microfluidic/optical integration for sophisticated biomedical diagnostics.

Research facilities at Mines assist local companies and entrepreneurs prepare technologies and products for commercialization. Examples include:

Colorado Fuel Cell Center: The center’s 3,500-square-foot laboratory was designed and constructed specifically for fuel cell research. The facilily has complete fabrication and performance-testing equipment for both solid-oxide and polymer-electrolyte membrane fuel cells. This capability is critical to the center’s many collaborations with local fuel cell related companies.
Advanced Mineralogy Research Laboratory: The center is home to a state-of-the-art QEMSCAN® system, contributed by Intellection Pty Ltd, an Australia-based corporation that develops analytics solutions for geoscience applications.
Golden Energy Computing Organization: This new facility aims to be a national hub for computational inquiries focused on the discovery of new ways to meet the energy needs of our society. It maintains a high performance computing (HPC) cluster that was recently ranked as one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.
Renewable Energy Materials Research Center: In September 2008, the National Science Foundation established this innovative center with a $9 million award. The center will work with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the private sector to develop break-through materials for emerging renewable energy technologies.

Humanitarian Engineering, a new minor at Colorado School of Mines, transforms engineering design education to deliver useful applications that directly improve the well-being of under-served populations.

The Center for Assessment: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (CA-STEM) and the Trefny Institute for Education Innovation are working to increase the pool of students pursuing an education and professional careers in the STEM disciplines. An example is the Bechtel K-5 Education Excellence Initiative that brings together Mines faculty and graduate students with K-5 educators in the Adams 50 and Aurora Public Schools, areas that have high concentrations of under-represented populations.