Lauren Fritz, a mining
engineering major at South Dakota Mines, spent part of her summer in
Australia thanks to an internship with Caterpillar.
“I got to work with one of the autonomous mine sites
in the world,” says Fritz. “All the machines there are Caterpillar, and we got
to see all of them interacting with each other all by themselves.”
Fritz was on-site in Western Australia as an engineering
intern to witness and observe some of Caterpillar’s autonomous machines. “All
of the equipment on site was operating so well. It was really cool to see huge
haul trucks, the size of houses, operating autonomously. It was a fantastic
window into the future of mining engineering.”
One item that Fritz noticed is that autonomous
mining still includes highly trained people who are needed to keep the
operation running.
“There is still a lot of stigma that increasing
autonomous systems will take away jobs.
I see it more as shifting jobs into new roles,” says Fritz. “In
Australia, I was able to talk to a lot of operators and they were all in full
support of the conversion to autonomous vehicles on the site. For one, it
vastly increased safety. They also noted that no haul-truck drivers lost their
jobs at the mine; they were just relocated to other areas where they were still
needed.”
Fritz points out that trained personnel are still
required for the operation of autonomous mining vehicles. These autonomous
systems still need everyone from mining engineers to lead them to the right
areas in the ore body to computer programmers to maintain the software. “Mining
engineers and other skilled professionals are still going to be around, even as
mines move to autonomous systems, professionals are still needed in all areas
of this industry from mine planning to equipment sales.”
Alongside her stint in Australia, Fritz spent part
of the summer crossing the United States. She spent time in Peoria. Ill., and
then traveled to Arizona to visit Caterpillar’s Tucson Proving Ground. “It was
great because I got to see some Caterpillar machines that I had not seen before.
It was really, really fun,” she says.
Fritz says her studies at Mines prepared her for
this internship in ways she was not expecting.
“I had to constantly think about what I have learned
about the operation of underground and surface mines and how Caterpillar can
help meet the needs of those in the industry.
It also made me realize that my mining engineering background gives me
many opportunities at a company like Caterpillar -- from sales to mine and
equipment design and much more.”
Fritz has participated on campus at the Cat®
Labs MineStar™ Consortium for the
past two years and has accepted Caterpillar’s offer to continue her
internship into the school year working on the campus of South Dakota Mines.
Her experience is an example of the benefits of
taking on an internship while in college. The most recent data from the class
of 2022 shows 100% placement rate in their field of study for Mines students
who took part in an internship during their college career. The data also shows that graduates who
completed at least one internship landed an average starting salary of $72,458
compared to those without an internship of $62,558.