Montana Tech Graduate School: Micro-Credentials in Extractive Technologies

Join us at Montana Technological University Graduate School to strengthen the talent and expertise in the critical minerals and materials supply chain. Courses are designed for technical mastery for students that have completed engineering fundamentals, students assessments incorporate synthesis, analysis, and design.

This program is now accepting students for Fall 2025.

Montana Tech has a 125 year legacy in natural resource engineering, driven by mining and extraction in the region. This institutional knowledge is now being transferred to 7 ‘Tracks’, each consisting of a 10-credit hour course sequence, that allows for specialization and technical mastery. Each Track includes 9-credit hours of technical theory delivered to remote learners via asynchronous delivery with regular substantive interactions (RSIs). Each track will also include a one-credit hour hands-on ‘practicum’ delivered in a concentrated format on Montana Tech’s campus, leveraging laboratory and pilot-scale facilities. The program upskills engineers in traditional fields, complementing BS or MS degrees, or serving as a stand-alone certification. It can also be used as technical electives or stacked toward an existing master’s degree.
The Tracks (gray diamonds) of our certificate program correspond to the science/engineering required for the life cycle of mineral recovery.

The professional certification tracks are designed for a student with a science or engineering core in a traditional engineering discipline who have sound foundational engineering concepts (e.g., physics, chemistry, calculus, differential equations). Courses are designed for the advanced undergraduate or graduate level. Differentiated assessments distinguish undergraduate vs. graduate level outcome, with the latter requiring greater independence, design, and/or synthesis of new information. The material is designed for asynchronous on-line delivery in which students, allowing adult and non-traditional learners to complete the coursework at their own pace. The asynchronous content is designed to maintain regular substantive interactions (RSI) between faculty and student, incorporating chat rooms, office hours, interactive assessments, and forums to allow for peer interactions. The concentrated summer practicums are designed for synchronous on-campus delivery over a 1-2 week summer period on Montana Tech’s campus.

The professional certification tracks are designed for a student with a science or engineering core in a traditional engineering discipline and are thus designed to ‘upskill’ an engineer in a more traditional field, providing specialization and hands-on application of the theory to real world problems. Students that complete the 10-credit hour certificate will receive a post-baccalaureate certificate from Montana Technological University, a university accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. Undergraduate engineering programs at Montana Tech are ABET-accredited; including programs in geological, mining, metallurgical, and environmental engineering.

Moreover, the tracks are designed to either complement traditional academic degrees (at the BS or MS level) or serve as a stand-alone post-baccalaureate professional certification. To complement a traditional BS degree, partnering undergraduate engineering programs may use the 10-credit sequence as a technical elective series to fit within the course sequence for a traditional engineering degree. To complement a traditional MS degree, students may ‘stack’ one or more of the tracks towards one of Tech’s existing masters’ degrees.

Montana Tech is a small STEM-focused, primarily undergraduate, and emerging research institute (PUI and ERI). Founded as the Montana School of Mines in 1900 to support the copper mining and smelter operations of the region, Tech supplied the engineers that supplied the U.S. with the copper needed for both World Wars. Today, the community is left with the nation’s most voluminous Superfund site and a lasting scar on the landscape and its economy. The ABET-accredited programs in mining, metallurgical, and geological at Montana Tech not only have a 100+ year legacy, but with active mines in the community, abandoned mine lands on campus, a neighborhood Superfund site, and generational restoration projects, the hands-on educational experiences offered by regional mining legacies offers an unparalleled experiential learning experience. Notably, Montana Tech is one of only five Universities in the nation that is accredited in all four of these disciplines, and was sixth in the nation in 2022 for the number of degrees awarded in these fields.

To register for this program, please fill out an online application. You will need an unofficial undergraduate transcript, and a short statement of interest. Letters of recommendation are optional for this program, and are waived upon request. The application fee will be waived for active military and veterans. Please contact us with any questions you may have with your application.