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So when UK College of Engineering recruiter Ron Robinson showed up one spring day to talk about UK’s mining engineering program, Mallory wasn’t initially interested; however, the longer Ron talked, the more intrigued she became.

“Ron Robinson is a very convincing guy!” Mallory concedes. “He told me about the different scholarships available to mining students and demonstrated how mining engineering is closely related to civil engineering. He made a compelling case.”

With months to go before the start of her freshman year, Mallory made the switch. She enrolled at UK and immersed herself in the world of mining.

“When I began studying mining, I realized how little I knew about it,” Mallory remembers. “I had a lot to learn about the intricate processes involved in extracting minerals from the earth. We say it a lot, but it’s true—what isn’t grown must be mined.”

For Mallory, learning the mining trade involved four internships—three near her home in Madisonville, Ky., and one in Texas. After a few stints with Alliance Coal’s Hopkins County Coal operation, Mallory decided to build a career around coal mining. To further her knowledge, Mallory decided to enter the BS/MBA program, which lets students graduate with an undergraduate degree in mining and a master’s in business administration.

“My hope is to one day become a chief engineer and general manager of a mining operation. During my internship, I realized how much the chief engineer is involved in the business side of the operation. With just one extra year, I was able to complete my dual degree and become better prepared for what I want to do in my career,” explains Mallory.

Prior to graduating in December, Mallory took a full time position with Alliance Coal—this time working at their operations headquarters in Lexington. She eventually hopes to move back to western Kentucky and become chief engineer, perhaps at the same place where she had interned.

“From Dr. G.T. Lineberry, who challenged me and expected me to put forth my very best, to my involvement with the Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration (SME), which allowed me to travel to Salt Lake City, Denver, Phoenix and Las Vegas, I am grateful for my time in the mining engineering program at UK,” Mallory says enthusiastically. “I definitely made the right choice.”

For starters, Brett is from Chicago where coal mining was a fairly prominent industry in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries; however, coal mining operations had left the “City of the Big Shoulders” by the 1960s—long before Brett was born.

Second, Brett’s primary interest growing up was working on cars and trucks. After high school, he turned his passion into a career as a mechanic, earning certificates to work on automotive diesel, hydraulic and transport refrigeration trucks. So how did a mechanic from Chicago end up in UK’s mining engineering program?

“While I liked doing the work of a mechanic, I discovered that the saying ‘don’t make your hobby your job’ is true,” says Brett. “I needed to find a new career.”

Brett began taking classes at a community college. He knew he wanted to focus on engineering, but wasn’t sure which engineering field suited him best. That summer, he found his answer.

“I was vacationing with my family in Minnesota and the weather was awful. We found an advertisement for tours of the Soudan Mine not too far from us and decided it beat sitting around indoors. I went underground, looked around and said, “This is so cool! I could see myself getting into this.”

When his family returned home, Brett visited a career center. He wasn’t sure if mining engineering was a program offered by universities. After learning that only 13 universities in the entire nation offered mining engineering, he began applying. Over the next few months, he was accepted by the University of Missouri-Rolla (now Missouri University of Science and Technology) and the University of Kentucky. In the end, Brett chose UK largely on the basis of one individual—Dr. Braden Lusk.

“I had heard a lot of good things about Dr. Lusk, so I decided to come here,” Brett explains. “I was interested in his work with explosives and he helped me get an internship with the powder crew at Nelson Brothers based in Birmingham, Ala. I appreciate that Dr. Lusk is so easy to connect with on a personal level. He doesn’t make you feel stupid for asking questions and he doesn’t act like he’s above everyone else just because he has a Ph.D.”

Brett’s work with Nelson Brothers gave him a firsthand look at the demands of working on a blasting crew. After proving himself capable with simple tasks, Nelson Brothers gave Brett more responsibility, including letting him crunch the data with mining engineers and check blast patterns on actual surface mines in West Virginia.

“I loved it,” he recalls. “It’s hard work. I don’t think anyone realizes what those guys go through until they’ve done it.”

To continue his research in explosives engineering, Brett plans to pursue a master’s degree with Dr. Lusk after he graduates.  In the meantime, the two are working together on the University of Kentucky Explosives Research Team (UKERT). As Brett reflects on his time in the mining engineering program, he strongly recommends it to students considering an engineering degree.

“Mining engineering touches on all of the other disciplines. If you like the chemical engineering side, you can work on the leeching operation. Electrical engineers are needed because the mines have their own power grids. Civil engineers and geotechnical engineers are indispensable to mining operations. Whatever you enjoy, you can apply it to mining.”

The questions are important because not every mining-related accident is the same. “Unfortunately, when most people see ‘mining fatality’ on the news, they recall past mining tragedies that receiving national attention; but some accidents are truly unforeseeable and not all accidents have easy explanations or should give the impression that mining in inherently unsafe,” says Dr. Perry.

This past fall, Dr. Kyle Perry, along with other co-investigators, received a $1.25M grant from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). While the goals of the grant cover two different areas of research, both are aimed at improving safety at surface and underground mines.

One aspect of the grant involves researching high wall stability and the effects of ground vibrations upon it—typically due to blasting. The team, led by Dr. Perry, plans to monitor high walls (any vertical face at a mine) for displacement and correlate it with ground vibrations that might have caused the movement. Aided by seismographs, blast records and a laser scanning able to create a point cloud of the wall, Dr. Perry will be able to create a model able to inform mining engineers about the vulnerability of their high walls relative to their blasting amplitude.

The other part of the grant is intended to investigate the benefit of LED lighting technology in underground coal mines. LED lights have the potential to give engineers a different picture of what they see compared to normal incandescent or halogen lighting. The team will incorporate a bank of LED lights onto roof bolting machines and determine if the different quality of light allows technicians to identify places where extra roof bolts are needed.

“Both parts of the grant are designed to increase the level of safety at underground and surface mines,” says Dr. Perry. “We hope our findings on high wall stability and LED lighting can prevent any unfortunate and unnecessary accidents.”

Although trained as a civil engineer at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Dr. Perry’s gravitation toward explosives engineering began when he observed the kind of work his brother-in-law, Braden Lusk, was doing in explosives engineering as a graduate student at Missouri-Rolla. He took fifteen credit hours at Missouri-Rolla and earned a minor in explosives engineering. Enthusiastic about blasting and facing a scant civil engineering job market, Dr. Perry followed Dr. Lusk to the University of Kentucky’s Department of Mining Engineering, where the latter had just accepted a faculty position. Three years later, Dr. Perry received his Ph.D. and was hired onto the mining engineering faculty. “I really enjoyed the research and getting involved in blasting related projects,” he explains. “I was able to teach an advanced blasting class while a graduate student and loved it. I also saw taking a faculty position as a way to interact with industry while also engaging in research.”

One of Dr. Perry’s responsibilities is to operate the rock mechanics lab and teach a course on rock mechanics—both formerly conducted by retired professor Kot Unrug. “Dr. Unrug is an amazing person,” Dr. Perry reflects. “I have taken trips with him and learned so many tips and tricks that would have taken me years to discover. He is an incredibly practical and knowledgeable person and my hope is to take his material and utilize newer learning methods and technologies to help students understand it.”

Mine safety is a serious concern and in only his second year on the mining engineering faculty, his work through the NIOSH grant offers hope that high walls and mine roofs will be safer for miners and their families. “Every mine is different, and I can’t throw a blanket over the whole U.S. and say what I’m doing will work for every single mine,” he admit, “ but there is a wide spectrum of things I can do and I’m glad to have the opportunity to do them.”

Kyle Perry

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The growth and transformation of the Department of Mining Engineering has coincided with Dr. Unrug’s tenure. “Since I came here, mining has come to exist as its own department when it was once just a section of civil engineering. We only had three professors and zero resources,” he says. “With commitment and time, we built slowly and now are one of the primary mining engineering programs in the country. That would not have happened without the commitment of people in the industry and the creation of the Mining Engineer Foundation. Both had a monumental impact because they allowed us to have a material base for our work.”

For Dr. Unrug, retirement hardly means inactivity. As an Emeritus professor, he plans to continue working on research projects with Dr. Kyle Perry, who will take over as Director of the Rock Mechanics Laboratory, and enjoy time off for scuba diving, golf, sailing and skiing. “My principle is to play hard or work hard,” he smiles. “Don’t do anything in between!”

More than likely, Dr. Unrug will also take time to reflect on his career as a professor and the many mining engineering students on whom he had an opportunity to put his stamp of influence over the past three decades. “The best reward of teaching is when you see the students you’ve taught doing well in life,” he summarizes. “That’s better than any of the other metrics we use.”