Get Hands-On Experience with an Internship
One of the many great opportunities with the School of Mining and Mineral Resources is the chance at testing the waters of a potential career with a student internship. Many interns have the opportunity to go to a mine site to do their internship. Companies invest in their interns. Interns also have an opportunity to learn many technical skills necessary for their field, including coding. Not only are there many opportunities for paid internships, some companies will also pay for housing and other expenses for interns living on-site.
Find an internship in the mineral resources industry on Handshake.
Student advice to help find an internship
Start early!
Companies open their applications as early as October for the following summer. If you send an application in early, “your probability goes up,” says Caelen Burand, fourth year student advanced Master’s in mining and geological engineering.
Apply to multiple places
In his first year at UArizona, Caelen Burand applied to over 20 internships, and received several offers to choose between.
Get someone else to check your resume!
It’s hard to find your own errors. “UArizona has a lot of opportunities [to check your resume]” says graduate student Biraj Lama, who sent his resume to other students in the SME chapter to check for mistakes and other advice.
Research the hiring process
Does the company do video interviews? Do you need to send a project? Graduate student Nicholas Tillotson says you should know what to expect from the hiring timeline to prepare yourself in case you need to send other applications. It is also helpful to know how long it will take, in case students need to find summer housing.
Students share internship stories
Read about some of the ways students have been involved throughout their time at the University of Arizona to prepare themselves for their future careers:
Meghan Greenslade is an undergraduate student at the University of Arizona studying environmental engineering hoping to graduate in 2023. During Fall 2022 she did her third internship with Freeport-McMoRan. Greenslade has done research about acid rock drainage, collected and analyzed years of weather and discharge data, and has even done a project on legal arguments for permitting. During her internships, she has visited five different Freeport locations in Arizona and Colorado.
“I think it is important as a freshman or sophomore to know that it is still possible to get an internship without any relevant experience,” says Greenslade. She’s “learned how to take [her] skills from class and apply them to industry, how to better work and communicate with others, and what it is like to be an employee for a large company.”
Graduate student Nicholas Tillotson, Mining Engineering with a focus in metallurgy, spent Summer 2022 at the Freeport-McMoRan mine in Bagdad, Arizona. While on site, Tillotson worked as a metallurgist in the SX plant, helping other metallurgists with their projects.
Nicholas worked in supporting SX [=Solvent Extraction] Operations, and one of his main projects included optimizing the reconfiguration of their SX trains.
Interning as a Metallurgical Engineering Intern never seems to have a dull day; as Nicholas explained, every day seems to bring something new. The most valuable thing he has learned is working directly with operators and technicians and developing a perspective of what mining engineers deliver—reliability and ease of maintenance and the importance of that.
Biraj Lama, a graduate student at UArizona in Mining and Mineral Engineering, during Summer 2022 was a Geotechnical Engineering Intern at Golder Associates, a global environmental consulting firm in Phoenix, Arizona.
Biraj's internship allowed him to gain real-world experience in a position that offers much more than he ever expected. From historical mine dating to using Python for machine automation, the knowledge he gained is something that he says is most valuable.
For Lama, working for a consulting firm helped him decide what he wanted to do after his Master’s program, especially if he wanted to work in a city or on a mine site.
A piece of advice Biraj would give to students looking for internships: expand your skill set, whether that be knowledge of different programs or knowledge of modeling, to stand out.
Caelen Burand at the SX Mine
During Summer 2022, Caelen was Director of Operations for Mercury Free Mining, a 501c3 non-profit organization working to advance geometallurgy to reduce and eliminate harmful mercury from being used within artisanal and small-scale gold mining. He researched the recovery of gold with various processors using gold ores from across the globe and helping operate the non-profit.
Caelen also completed a pilot project for a novel system of mercury augmentation with two Peruvian mining cooperatives. This is where he spent much of his time and worked on projects in Colombia and Kenya related to enhancing the sustainability of mining operations.
Caelen advises students looking for an internship to identify a person or people they would like to be in the future and reach out to them about opportunities to work with them as an intern.
Kyle Turcheck studies Environmental and Occupational Health with an emphasis on Industrial Hygiene. During Summer 2022, he interned as a health and safety specialist at Freeport McMoRan in Bagdad, Arizona. He also worked in the Industrial Hygiene department, which he describes as “the science department within the health and safety department.”
Kyle helped with the annual air quality sampling. He explains: “My internship was surrounded by dust suppression at the primary crusher. In my investigation, I did a ventilation survey of the primary crusher's dust collector to find deficiencies such as damaged ductwork.” He also assisted in getting workers hot permits and confined space permits which tested the air for safe oxygen levels.
Danielle Schroeder, an undergraduate student in Environmental Engineering, spent Summer 2022 as an intern at Freeport-McMoRan. At the Morenci mine, Schroeder worked on a project examining contaminated electrical equipment and creating a plan to phase out the old equipment. Her other project involved documenting spills and learning how they get processed back into mine processing. Schroeder saw firsthand the impressive work at Freeport-McMoran to make mining more sustainable, including above and beyond recycling efforts, efforts towards carbon neutrality, wildlife protection, and minimizing pollutants.
She was invited back to the internship, but at a site in Colorado for Summer 2023. In the future she hopes to work in developing countries to promote access to clean water.
Summer 2022, Katie was one of two interns in North America working with Komatsu as an applications engineer. Katie primarily worked creating programs for software applications in Microsoft Excel and Power Apps. Additionally, Katie learned more about being an applications engineer and has had three traveling opportunities. In July, Katie went to Milwaukee with the other intern working with Komatsu and a full-time applications engineer to represent the Peoria group in product support meetings. Katie also went to Minnesota for a drill study, and in early August she went back to Milwaukee. So, by the end of the summer, Katie had been to the brand new Milwaukee offices twice, been to a mine site for a study as an AE, and contributed to the effort to create application tools for Komatsu. Overall, Katie feels like she was treated with much respect as an intern and given some great projects to work on!
MS student in Mining and Minerals Engineering, spent Summer 2022 as a metallurgical intern for Sierrita Operations Concentrator for Freeport-McMoRan.
“I'm extremely appreciative that I was able to participate in several initiatives and broaden my understanding of the mining industry,” says Muhammad Danishwar.
A Cyclone Tracking System was developed by Danishwar to effectively determine which cyclones (devices that use centrifugal force to extract mineral particles) must be replaced, which results in better separation of particles and optimized copper recovery.
“I made a lot of friends there,” says Danishwar.
Kate Willa Brown, a junior at The University of Arizona studying Mining Engineering. Summer 2020 she was a Summer Trainee at Maptek.
“I learned so much about Maptek’s software during their training program. My day-to-day work was filled with familiarizing myself with the platform and creating mine plans based off of training drill hole data. The best part about this program is that I was given the ability to use Maptek’s software comfortably and fluently, so I can add another great skill to my abilities as an up-and-coming engineer. My most exciting experience was the ability to create orebody projections and block models just from drilling data alone. I would totally recommend this training program to anyone looking to familiarize themselves with a good mine design software.”
Maptek is a company specializing in 3D modeling, spatial analysis and design technology for the mining industry!
We regularly publish internship spotlights on our Instagram account
Additional Resources for Finding Internships
Study the Roadmap to Internships
Sign up for a workshop by Student Engagement & Career Development