Dear friends and colleagues,
The end of the year is the perfect time to reminisce and think about the upcoming year. I see a bright future for the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering (EME) as we continue to be the premier program devoted to all aspects of energy whether that be renewable energy production, mineral and fossil fuel exploration and production, utilization and sustainability, risk analysis, economics, and environmental impact assessment.
This last year, we welcomed the addition of two online programs to EME, the Energy and Sustainability Policy (ESP) undergraduate program and the graduate Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability MSP program (RESS). The ESP program has several hundred B.S. students, while the RESS program has over a hundred M.S.P. (professional masters) students. Both programs complement our others, and we look forward to working with them in the future.
Our programs consistently rank among the best in their respective areas, and their excellent quality is evidenced by the high undergraduate and graduate enrollment numbers that exceed 1,000 students, making us one of the largest engineering programs at Penn State. Our Mining Engineering program is ranked #2 in the United States by the latest QS World University survey, while the Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering program is ranked #5 in the U.S. and #19 worldwide. The unique combination of our six undergraduate and two graduate programs within one department offers advantages in collaboration that do not exist in any university worldwide and gives our students an opportunity to develop a truly thorough systems-level understanding of the design, implementation, and analyses of life cycles in capstone courses.
Producing enough energy for more people, while reducing greenhouse gases and avoiding future environmental catastrophes related to renewables, is a complex problem. All aspects of environmental damage, not just greenhouse gases, must be considered and we are uniquely positioned from both a policy and technical perspective to embed sustainability as a core value in all facets of energy and mineral engineering. We have the expertise to study the environmental impact, assess the risks, perform systems-level optimization, perform sophisticated economic analysis of decisions, and propose policies that consider both the engineering and social aspects. Our faculty engage in research across program areas and have strong ties to world-class institutes within the University that provide extensive and state-of-the-art infrastructure, allowing our faculty to develop new research directions and proposals. Unfortunately, we can only share the briefest spotlight of some of our achievements in these twelve pages, but I encourage you to visit our website for a larger picture of what keeps us so busy throughout the year.
We live in exciting times, with major shifts both in our energy landscape and our perceptions regarding sustainability and stewardship of
Earth’s resources. The department continues to evolve to address these challenges and pursue exciting opportunities. I look forward to
exchanging ideas regarding these issues with you and value your involvement in defining the future of the EME department.
Best wishes,
Russell Johns