GBC appoints director for proposed mining center

ELKO — Dr Anthony “Sam” Spearing will be the new Executive Director of the (proposed) Mining Center of Excellence and Workforce Development at Great Basin College beginning Jan. 1, 2023. 

Dr Spearing is an accomplished engineer who has worked in the mining and underground civil construction industries for decades and has his mining and civil engineering degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and his PhD from the Technical University of Silesia in Poland. 

He has lived and worked on 5 continents and travelled to over 75 countries during his career. 

He has published over 65 peer reviewed journal papers, co-authored 3 books and has had 6 patents successfully commercialized and used on the mines.

Sam began his academic career in the Mining & Mineral Resources Department of Southern Illinois University Carbondale followed by 4 years (on a short-term skills visa) at the Western Australia School of Mines, Curtin University where he served as the School’s Director and then as the Director of the Kalgoorlie Regional University Campus.

He then spent 3 years as a Professor in the School of Mines at China University of Mining & Technology, the largest mining school in the world with over 2,000 mining related students as the only foreign academic. 

Since July 2022, he has been a professor in the Department of Mining & Metallurgical Engineering at UNR and with the proposed Mining Center of Excellence, a collaboration between Great Basin College and the Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, UNR. 

GBC President Joyce Helens welcomed Dr Sam Spearing to the GBC family, saying “Dr Spearing is the right person at the right time to lead the new collaborative (GBC & UNR) venture with industry as well as GBC technical education and training. 

Dr Spearing’s career has successfully focused on technical education and training, project management, innovation, safety, research and mentoring so he understands the importance of a well-educated and trained workforce and collaboration with industry.”