New Academic Leaders Named Ahead of Fall Semester at South Dakota Mines
As South Dakota Mines prepares for the start of the fall semester, five longtime faculty
members are stepping into new leadership roles across the university’s academic departments.
“This new cohort of departmental leaders was already all well-known and respected
within our academic programs and have been selected to help South Dakota Mines to
continue pushing the boundaries of both academic and research excellence that we’re
known for,” said James Stone, Ph.D., provost and vice president of academic
and student affairs.
The new leadership appointments include:
- Kenneth Benjamin, Ph.D., will be taking over as head of the Karen M. Swindler
Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. Benjamin has been with Mines since 2007, previously serving as interim department
head from 2020 to 2023. - Following the departure of Robert Hall, Ph.D., who led both the mining engineering
and management and geology and geological engineering departments, the
university has established separate leadership for the two programs. Rudra Mitra,
Ph.D., will serve as interim head of mining engineering and management, while Kurt
Katzenstein, Ph.D., has been appointed interim head of geology and geological engineering.
Mitra, a Syd & Felicia Peng Professor in Mining
Engineering, has been with Mines since 2022, and Katzenstein, recently selected as
the Mickelson Professor, has been a faculty member since 2008. - Marc Robinson, Ph.D., assumed leadership of civil and environmental engineering, succeeding Stone after his appointment to provost and vice president for academic and student affairs. Robinson joined the Mines faculty in 2009.
- Adam Piper, Ph.D., has returned to Mines as head of the industrial engineering department. He previously spent more than a decade in the Mines faculty before serving the past two years as a teaching professor at Mississippi State University.
“They have been tasked to further integrate experiential learning into their academic programs to best prepare our students for the grand challenges that await them in the workforce of tomorrow,” Stone said. “I’m looking forward to seeing their departments and programs continue to thrive under their leadership.”