The Mines Museum of Earth Science will reopen to the public Saturday, Feb. 27 following a nearly yearlong closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Colorado School of Mines celebrated its Fall 2020 Undergraduate Commencement on Dec. 18, conferring a total of 275 bachelor’s degrees during a virtual ceremony.

Mines alumni Fran Vallejo ’87 and Scott Irvine ’87 recently made a $1 million gift to establish the Vallejo-Irvine Professional Development Program at Colorado School of Mines.

The six Mines students will serve as program ambassadors for humanitarian engineering and will seek out new opportunities for collaboration with faculty, alumni, corporations and non-governmental organizations.

The new research and educational collaboration between Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University and University of Arizona launched in June 2020.

Alexis Navarre-Sitchler, associate professor of geology and geological engineering, and Craig Brice, professor of practice of mechanical engineering, have been awarded the Ben L. Fryrear Endowed Chair for Innovation and Excellence to drive institutional change at Colorado School of Mines.

The rankings were based on Money’s 2020 Best Colleges list, with an emphasis on those schools that were “particularly good values” with strong early-career earnings for graduates.

“A growing number of engineers and scientists want to understand how their work can contribute to broad social and environmental goals," program director Jessica Smith said.

The former head of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department has served as the interim dean of EREP since July.

“The core of the existing relationship between Mines and NREL is materials science for renewable energy," said Ryan M. Richards, professor of chemistry and the Mines lead of Nexus. "Through this seed funding, we were able to create new connections from Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Petroleum Engineering, Civil Engineering."