The Society of Women Engineers website published a first-person feature about Meghan McDonald, who earned her bachelor's and master's at New Mexico Tech. She is now an engineer in the New Mexico Abandoned Mine Program. Here is a short excerpt of the article. Click the link at the bottom of this page to read the full article.

 

A Day in the Life of Mining Engineer Meghan McDonald

What does mining engineer Meghan McDonald love about her job? The opportunity to visit beautiful places around the state, to be out in the field during construction and work on challenging designs that keep people safe, and designing solutions that require out-of-the-box thinking.

I grew up in a small mining town called Clifton in Arizona. Nearly everyone in my family worked in the nearby Morenci open-pit copper mine, including my grandfather, who was my role model when I was a kid. He had an amazing collection of rocks and minerals from the mine, and this sparked my interest in geology. My twin sister shared similar interests with me, and when it came time for us to head to college, we explored the geology program at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech). During our tour of Tech, we met the chair of the Mining Engineering department, who explained that mining engineering would allow us to work with cool geology and also do important design work as engineers. I was hooked that day and graduated from Tech with my bachelor’s degree in Mining Engineering several years later.

Click here to read the full article at the SWE website