Hancock — Back in the 1970s through the 1990s, a group of Michigan Technological University graduate students in the mining engineering program received hands-on experience pulling rock from the bowels of the Keweenaw Peninsula.
In addition to their practical education, students also received classroom instruction. But after finding it hard to get to class on time in the depths of winter, the students were told to make their own classroom out of solid rock in the Quincy Mine in Hancock.
Because the air is 43 degrees with 100% humidity, the wooden desk chairs have molded and rotted. The lights are falling down and the blackboard with first names written in blue glistens with the damp.
The chairs are still configured, at least somewhat, like a typical classroom. They face the front, where the blackboard stands in front of mining tools for their practical application.
The walls bear the marks of students, holes pounded into the hard basalt. Perhaps it was a final exam or a midterm.
There are heaters still mounted onto the back rock wall to keep the temperature higher than the natural chill. Fluorescent lights, now defunct, would have provided ample illumination for lessons.
Students would no doubt have studied the geological principles, the science behind mining, but there’s no substitute for practical experience.
The mining engineering program still spans the academic and the practical. Students learn everything from the specifics on rocks and minerals to “mine planning under uncertainty.” They get practice on mine equipment reliability and learn the “geology of metallic ore deposits with emphasis on geochemistry.”
Over the years, Michigan Tech students placed vertical rods into the ceiling to keep the rock from shifting sideways and caving in on them. Students expanded the passage over the years to allow visitors easy access to the areas open for viewing.
There’s a four-person tram that students used to remove the rock as opposed to the more frugal one-person cart favored by mine operators when it was open. You drill a hole, put dynamite in, blow it up, truck the rock out, and then do it again.
Now in a state of disrepair and decay, the subterranean classroom is a testament to the spirit of industry and education we need in academia again.
Too often these days, degrees are handed out to those without experience in the real world or with little practical application outside the ivory tower. It’s why gender studies majors are changing the world one espresso drink at a time.
These students weren’t just aspiring miners with academic glimpses of their future jobs. They were actualizing it in real time. Students in this state can learn like this again.
The adults in the room must give them the power to run the drills and push the trams full of rock, to let them live and expect nothing else from them. It also takes parents who teach them the right way to live, so they don’t abuse their responsibility.
If students are able to receive it, we can find new classrooms like this one—in hard to reach places, built on adversity, highlighting human strength.
Until then, we have this underground class as a reminder of what’s possible.
Brendan Clarey is deputy editor of Michigan Enjoyer.
