Queen’s University plans next mining course for Oct. 25-26

Ryan Matthiesen, a senior associate at Macquarie Capital Advisors in Toronto, had worked on the finance side of the mining sector for more than five years.

His finance skills were all cutting edge — but his understanding of geology and the finer points of mineral processing needed some fine-tuning.

So like many other bankers on Bay Street he enrolled in an executive course on mining and exploration run by the Department of Mining Engineering at Queen’s University.

The intensive two-day seminar designed for professionals in the investment industry covered everything from the technical aspects of ore body formation to resources and reserves, open pit and underground mining techniques, mining costs and productivity measurements, and extractive metallurgy and mineral processing.

“I should have taken the course earlier,” Matthiesen says in hindsight. “It was a great first step to understanding more about geology and mineral processing from the perspective of a geologist or mining engineer.”

In the first days and weeks following the course in May, Matthiesen says, the material he learned proved to be a “big help.”

“I know there is a whole lot more to learn about these topics and the class could have easily gone on for weeks or months instead of days, but it was still informational.”

While private investors and mining analysts and associates typically make up the vast majority of the students in the mining course, its coverage of the technical aspects of mining would also be useful for many people who work on the media relations and corporate communications side of the business. It has also drawn private clients of investment banking companies and mutual fund managers.

“A lot of investors in natural resources are fairly well educated about the business – it’s just the technical stuff and the jargon that they may be missing and perhaps how to put it all together in context and that’s what we’re trying to do,” explains Dave Love, one the course’s three instructors. Love, a geologist and consultant in geochemistry in mineral exploration and ore deposit geology, got his degree from Queen’s and is an adjunct professor there in the department of geological sciences.

Class discussion ranges from the basics of geology (ore-forming processes, sampling, reserve estimation), mining and mineral processing (flotation, leaching, concentration and solvent extraction), to project evaluation.

The beauty of the course is that the lecturers, who all hold doctorates in geology or mining engineering, have real-world experience and share their vast knowledge of the industry in an interesting and informative way.

George McIsaac, a mining engineer who consults on strategic planning and economic evaluation to producing mines and exploration companies is an adjunct professor at Queen’s in the department of mining engineering. He spent eight years in Chile as a senior project engineer, chief engineer, and superintendent of technical services for Barrick Gold before returning to Canada to do his PhD at Queen’s. He currently resides in Vina del Mar, about 100 km west of Santiago.

The course’s other lecturer is Boyd Davis, a chemical-process metallurgist and president of Kingston Process Metallurgy Inc., a company he co-founded in 2002 that performs bench scale process development work for clients around the world. Since his company deals with a wide variety of metals and processes, Davis is well placed to provide the section on processing. Like McIsaac, Davis is also an adjunct professor in Queen’s Department of Mining. Davis completed his post-doctoral degree in chemical metallurgy and has been consulting since 1997.

On the first day of the course students are introduced to the subject matter with an overview of the earth’s geological history. Deposit characteristics are looked at with a focus on gold, base metals (including deposit types such as porphyry copper, nickel copper and volcanogenic massive sulfides), as well as uranium and diamonds.

Participants are taught about what data goes into a resource estimate, the methods and details of resource reporting, National Instrument 43-101 standards, and the requirements necessary for a geologist to become a qualified person for the purposes of surveying technical reports and resource estimates.

Open-pit and underground mining techniques and design considerations are covered. Milling processes and operations are analyzed along with what goes into costs and productivity measurements.

A discussion of mineral processing includes metal processing flow sheets, pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy and other alternatives to traditional mineral processing.

The course wraps up with case studies of mining deposits around the world and what geologists look for in geology, resources and mining and processing design work.

The next course will be held in Toronto on Oct. 25-26. The course has been granted accreditation from the Investment Dealers Association.
For more information on the upcoming course scheduled at St. Andrew’s Club and Conference Centre in Toronto contact Kate Cowperthwaite at T: (613) 533-2230 or F:(613) 533-6597 or by Email: kate.cowperthwaite@mine.queensu.ca.