Field trip to Amerikohl’s Sann Surface coal mine in northern Washington County, May 2013. Students viewed modern coal mine reclamation practices as well as a surface overburden blast.

Field trips have become an important tool to demonstrate concepts discussed in class with real world examples. A corner-stone of this activity is the semi-annual trip to CONSOL’s Enlow Fork mine in Washington County, PA. Every term, a dozen students are taken underground to view modern mining practices. They are shown the importance of safety and travel to a continuous miner section and the longwall face. Other field trips include:

• CONSOL’s Bailey mine in Greene Co., PA to observe processes at a modern preparation plant
• Alpha Natural Resource’s Cumberland mine and CONSOL’s Dilworth mine, both in Greene Co., PA, to view engineering controls used to mitigate environmental impacts from mining
• Brookville Equipment Company, Brookville, PA, Joy Manufacturing Company, Franklin, PA, and J.H. Fletcher, Huntington, WV to examine equipment manufacturing processes
• NIOSH experimental mine / research laboratory in South Park, PA to explore the latest in mining health and safety research
• Robinson Fans to examine how industrial scale mine fans are designed and fabricated at their Zelienople, PA plant
• CONSOL’s Shoemaker Mine in the northern panhandle of West Virginia to observe components of a mine ventilation system
• CONSOL’s Hahn Treatment plant in northern Washington Co., PA to examine how coal mine discharge is treated to meet government standards
• CONSOL’s Enlow Fork stream mitigation work on Templeton Fork in Greene Co., PA
• Rosebud Mining’s Brush Creek slope construction project in Armstrong Co., PA to observe ground control techniques
• AmeriKohl’s Sann surface coal mine in northern Washington Co., PA to observe state-of-the-art mine reclamation efforts