James F. Ely is the new department head for CSM’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Petroleum Refining (CEPR).

Ely’s goal is to position CEPR in the top 25 percent of chemical engineering programs for graduates and research, while maintaining the top-tier status of the undergraduate program.

However, he realizes it will take some delicate balancing of the graduate and undergraduate programs in order to be successful in both.

Objectives for the undergraduate program include the following:

Improve the quality of undergraduate education by involving students in research projects, providing a better feel for their chosen field. The Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program sponsored by the National Science Foundation will help undergraduates to participate in summer research projects.

Enable more students to broaden their experiences through co-ops, international study, and internships. Ely would like to see the number of participants in these programs increase from 5 to 25 percent.

Continue to refine the curriculum. Many chemical engineering students have expressed concern that after their junior year they have only been exposed to theory in their classes and have not had opportunity to have hands-on experience within chemical engineering.


James A McNeil, a professor of physics at CSM, is the new head of the Physics Department, which has 120 undergraduate and graduate students, as well as nearly 20 faculty members.

His vision is to deliver high quality education and research by ensuring that all activities and actions promote excellence in the department’s three core missions.

Planning for the future, McNeil has devised a three-fold plan.

The first component addresses the undergraduate service courses. Currently all undergraduate students must take nine credit hours of physics, a recent increase from seven hours.

"Because Physics I, II and III support the entire curriculum, it is important for the department to deliver high quality learning experiences," he said.

The second departmental goal focuses on improving an already strong undergraduate physics major program. This will be accomplished by having greater depth and breadth of elective courses, and improved mentoring of students within the department’s "mixed advising mode," where student advising is done in concert with engineering faculty.

The third objective is to improve graduate education and research. "The department struggles to recruit graduate students. We need to identify a target market and go after high-quality graduate students," said McNeil.

He would also like to see greater depth and breadth in graduate electives to create an intellectually stimulating environment where graduate students can develop their own method of scientific approach and discovery.

"That’s what graduate training is about."

Misti Brady
Mines: The Magazine of Colorado School of Mines
Volume 90, Number 3