2021 Medal Of Merit Recipients
Sydney Hay
Sydney Hay is a champion for the mining industry -- a wealth creation engine for Arizona. An Arizona resident since 1979, Sydney was born and raised in a small town in Colorado. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Kansas Newman College with a Bachelor of Science degree in Education. She spent the next several years teaching elementary and high school students, both in Kansas and in Arizona.
Sarah A. Strunk
Sarah Strunk is Chair of the Board of Directors of Fennemore Craig, a Mountain West Law Firm. Strunk has represented numerous clients in the mining and natural resource industry over the past 3 decades and has been involved in many exciting development projects. She practices in business and finance law, with an emphasis on mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, international sales contracts and exploration projects.
Angela Watt
Angela Watt holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mining Engineering from the University of Arizona. While seeking her degree, Angela helped establish and lead the university’s Engineers Without Borders student organization. Watt received a Rio Tinto Scholarship while attending university which lead her to start her career with Rio Tinto’s Resolution Copper Project in Arizona as a mining engineer. She was responsible for the study team’s block caving design and mining schedule, and using lessons shared by operations groups, she created a blueprint for extraction level construction scheduling.
For more information on this year's Merit of Medal Recipients, click here.
Honorees from Mining's Past
Frederick Gardner Cottrell
Frederick Gardner Cottrell was born on January 10, 1877, in Oakland, California. After finishing high school, he entered the University of California, Berkeley at age 16 and graduated in 3 years. Cottrell then enrolled at Harvard but soon left to pursue graduate work in Germany where he received an advanced degree from the University of Berlin in 1901 and a Ph.D. from the University of Leipzig in 1902.
George H. Dern
George H. Dern was an American politician, mining innovator, and businessman. He is remembered today as the co-inventor of the Holt-Dern ore-roasting furnace, as a former governor of Utah (1925–1933), and as a former U.S. Secretary of War (1933–1936).
Francis W. Maclennan
Francis William Maclennan was an internationally renowned mining engineer and former Vice President of the Miami Copper Company. He was born in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada in 1876 and graduated from McGill University in Montreal in 1898. He worked for various mining enterprises in British Columbia, Utah, Nevada and Peru. From 1919 to 1936 he worked for the Miami Copper Company in Arizona in management and as Vice President.
For more information on the Inductees from Mining’s Past, click here.