Business News April 23 2018
Matt McKenzie
As local educational institutions go, the WA School of Mines has a higher-than-average representation of 40under40 First Amongst Equals winners. Industry heavyweights Bill Beament, the chief executive of Northern Star Resources and Chair of the WASMA Patrons Group, Battery Minerals boss David Flanagan,a member of the WASMA patrons Group and Saracen Mineral Holdings Managing Director Raleigh Finlayson, President of the WA School of Mines Alumni, have big plans for the Kalgoorlie-headquartered school.
Founded in 1899, WASM became a branch of the WA Institute of Technology (now of Curtin University) in 1969, and was ranked the world’s second best educator in minerals and mining engineering by QS World University Rankings last year, lifting 17 places from its 2016 position.
Colorado School of Mines was in the top spot.”We want to win the premiership going forward,” Mr Beament, former President of WASMA. Curtin has done a great job to broaden the offering of the school, he said, which had grown from a pure focus on disciplines such as mining and metallurgical engineering and surveying. Recent additions included oil and gas-related subjects such as petroleum engineering.
“Mining is not just dig, process, ship or sell, those days are long gone,” Mr Beament, “We’ve got the full spectrum of what we have to do in the community.”
A further step might be to look at areas such as environmental sciences and occupational health and safety, which were integral to the industry, he said. Even topics such as corporate governance, public relations and social inclusion with a mining edge, would fit. “They’re the things that need to get brought under the WASM banner,” Mr Beament said.”That’s what we do, most of our job now is more of(those issues).”
He said he was pushing hard for a postgraduate, or Harvard-style, course structure.”We’ve got a lot of the world’s best mining professionals, sitting here in Perth retired,” Mr Beament said. “Like the Sam Walshs of Rio Tinto, they should be guest lecturers.
“Our chief financial officers, our heads of corporate governance, our company secretaries, want to go and do postgraduate (courses).” Click Here