"Green" rock engineers from NTH

Jan Erik Kaarø

The first class of nine students from the new course of study completed their training at the end of 1993. Most of them soon had jobs in companies such as NORSAS (Norwegian Special Waste Treatment), Veritas Environment and oil companies. At the end of this year a new batch of 12 "green" engineers will be ready for the labour market, while a further 15 students started their course last autumn. "More than twice as many have said that they are interested in starting this autumn," says Professor Knut Lyng Sandvik. who is in charge of the new course of study.

The environmental engineers take the normal NTH courses in the Faculty of Applied Earth Sciences and Metallurgy for two years, before specializing for the last two and a half years. At this point they encounter courses which have hardly before been found on the timetables of petroleum, mining and metallurgy engineering students. These include biology, resources and environment, waste and handling acute contamination incidents. The idea is to create engineers with interdisciplinary insight into environmental problems. Some of their lecturers come from other parts of the University of Trondheim and from consulting firms such as OCEANOR.

Heavy industry, which employs most of NTH's output of "normal" students from this Faculty, suffers from a rather "dirty" image.

"All the same, no-one is better aware of the sources of pollution from such sources," points out Professor Lyng Sandvik.

"It is more or less like letting the genie out of the bottle when you open up a mine or drill in the seabed. Minerals and liquids that have been lying hidden and well protected for millions of years are suddenly brought into the light of day. We are the people who should and must be able to predict the consequences of making such changes in the environment" emphasizes the professor.