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 2011 was $63,400.
In a recent survey completed by PayScale Inc., Mines was the top-ranked public university in the nation for starting salaries of graduates with bachelor's degrees.

Faculty at Mines recently received more than $53.6 million in sponsored research awards.

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.