EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14/CBS4) — A renewed push to strengthen America’s supply of critical minerals is bringing new federal money to mining education — and the University of Texas at El Paso will be a major part of that effort.

UTEP President Heather Wilson said she attended two meetings at the White House on Friday, including a smaller session with the Secretary of the Interior that included “the 15 presidents of mining universities, some students, and some key leaders in the mining industry.” Wilson said the discussions focused on what needs to happen next “in order to get the technology and the talent for America to have access to critical minerals.”

Wilson said a larger meeting included the president of the United States, Donald Trump, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, and the Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, along with university presidents and more industry representatives.

She said the gathering included the announcement of “a tremendous federal commitment to mining education,” totaling “about a hundred million dollars for scholarships and expansion of education and training for the mining workforce.”

Wilson said UTEP is restarting mining engineering and has secured $52 million from Industry and the state of Texas to launch the program. She said the university also plans to apply to the Department of Energy to expand scholarship opportunities.

“Mining in the state of Texas is a $10 billion industry,” Wilson said, citing coal, aggregates and rare earth minerals found in West Texas, as well as “a tradition of copper in our region.”

Wilson said no school in Texas had been teaching mining engineering anymore, noting that the University of Texas “stopped teaching mining in the mid 1960s.” She said there are only 14 mining engineering schools left in the United States and that they graduated fewer than 200 mining engineers nationwide last year.

“When we’re at steady state, we will be graduating 100 from UTEP alone,” Wilson said.

WATCH THE FULL ROUNDTABLE:

White House roundtable on mining education (credit: CNN)

Wilson said UTEP already teaches geology, metallurgy, civil engineering and environmental sciences, which helped make it feasible to add mining engineering “without a huge cost.” She said the university had to build labs and that the state is building or funding those facilities. Wilson said UTEP is hiring six faculty members for the program, with one already on board and another two — possibly three — expected this year. She said the university also hired two people to recruit specifically for mining engineering.

UTEP plans to offer about $3 million in scholarships to freshmen for Texas students who want to become mining engineers, Wilson said. She also pointed to strong job prospects, saying the average mining engineer in Texas earns about $109,000 a year.

On the new federal funding, Wilson said the Department of Energy will run an application process for scholarships aimed at expanding the number of mining engineers.

She said UTEP is not planning a separate building for the program but is refitting part of an existing building for mining laboratories, and that work is already under construction.

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Wilson framed the push for critical minerals as both an economic and national security issue. She said that about a year ago the Chinese government announced it was stopping exports of some critical materials to the United States, which she said was “a big wake-up call for the auto industry, but also for the defense industry.” Wilson said there are critical minerals for which “85% of them are mined and refined in China,” and she said the United States needs to expand its sources of supply and reduce dependence.

Wilson also said the effort could have broader impacts for the Borderland region, describing mining as a major industry on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

She noted El Paso’s history of “cotton, cattle, and copper,” and said Freeport-McMoRan has “a huge copper facility” in El Paso. She said the region’s strengths extend from geology and mining through environmental restoration and advanced manufacturing, adding that El Paso and Ciudad Juarez form “the fifth largest manufacturing region in all of North America.”

Wilson said UTEP is currently recruiting its first class of mining engineering students, who will arrive “12 months from now.” She said mining engineering can be a strong fit for students who want hands-on engineering work across multiple disciplines, and she said UTEP intends to build “the largest and the best mining engineering program in America.”

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