Feature

When Hugh Harvey ’74, MS ’80 and John Wright ’69, PhD ’85 discovered that the youth hostel in Boppard, Germany, had closed its doors for the night, they had no choice but to improvise. They slept on a park-bench-turned-bunk-bed by the side of the Rhine River, Wright on the bench seat and Harvey on the ground below, their excessively heavy, hard-sided suitcases wedged beside them.

It was summer 1973 and the two young men were exploring Europe for the first time. To this day it’s one of Harvey’s favorite stories about their visit to Europe—an experience that taught him important lessons about self-reliance and exposed him to many different cultures and languages. Now the opportunity to study abroad is a component of the Harvey Scholars Program established at Mines this spring with a gift of $10 million from the Hugh and Michelle Harvey Family Foundation. And though Hugh jokes that, thanks to his gift, future Mines students may also get to sleep on park benches around the world, he is particularly enthusiastic about the travel component of the program.

He wants students to learn more about the world around them, and, in the process, more about themselves. He says he wants students to have “the chance to appreciate the complexities of adapting to a different culture, experience the family values of others, manage the complicated logistics of travel in a foreign country, accept differences, adjust to changes, learn to innovate.” And he also wants to give students the opportunity to master a new language.

Clearly, he’s not talking tourism—he’s talking immersion. Harvey scholars will be encouraged to spend a semester abroad, with an offer to have their travel expenses covered.

In addition to getting the attention of students who already had their sights set on Mines, the Harvey Scholars Program is likely to attract interest from others who have never heard of the school. In fact, Hugh himself first learned about Mines on a construction site in Kayenta, Ariz., where a co-worker, John Kyle, was attending Mines on a Peabody Coal Company scholarship. After Harvey applied and was accepted, it was a Newmont Mining scholarship that brought his out-of-state tuition within reach.

He hasn’t forgotten the gift, and with the scholars program, Harvey and his wife, Michelle, intend to “pay it forward.” Hugh and Michelle are deliberate about using this term: paying back a debt closes a transaction initiated in the past, he points out; paying it forward has more to do with passing along one’s good fortune in the hope that the beneficiaries will do the same. “We are looking for opportunities to enrich future generations,” said Harvey.

And they aren’t just handing out checks. Michelle is a veteran volunteer and supporter of the Jeffco/Gilpin Court Appointed Special Advocates program, which advocates for children caught up in the court system with dependency and neglect cases. “We’ve always felt very fortunate to have a strong and bonded family,” says Michelle. “This is my way of paying it forward.”

At this spring’s graduation banquet, where the $10 million gift for the scholars program was first publicly announced, Hugh echoed these sentiments. Speaking to graduating seniors, he asked them to wind the clock forward many years and consider the legacies they wish to leave behind. “What people remember you for the most may have little to do with what you earned, and much more to do with what you gave away, in some form or another,” he said. In keeping with this priority, Harvey scholarship applicants are required to write an essay about the meaning of paying it forward—how they anticipate investing in their communities as they get established in their careers and lives.

Harvey attributes much of his success to his Mines education: a bachelor’s in mining and a master’s in petroleum engineering. After first graduating in 1974, he spent three years in the mining industry, gradually growing more restless. “I was working in British Columbia at an open pit copper mine, and the workforce went on strike, giving me lots of time to think about my career,” said Harvey. His conclusions: Living in an isolated location and overseeing the routine operations of a mine didn’t suit his personality; the oil industry, on the other hand, promised considerably more excitement. “Being young and impatient, that had a lot of appeal to me,” said Harvey, who returned to Mines for a master’s degree in petroleum engineering in 1978.

He might have been looking for more variety and excitement, but he had no intention of striking out on his own. Having grown up watching his self-employed father work all hours of the day and night, year after year, to provide for his family, Harvey wanted a more settled life for himself and his family. However, when the energy industry shrank by 50 percent in the eighties, his plans were derailed. “I found myself self-employed, or maybe self-unemployed, and shortly after that, I realized I’d never again have a job in the traditional sense,” he said. It was only then that he started to think of himself as an entrepreneur.

Thanks to a conservative approach to their personal finances, Hugh and Michelle had accumulated minimal debt over the years. “That was really important. It gave us a platform from which I could be entrepreneurial,” said Hugh, who went on to form Harvey Operating and Production Company in the late eighties.

It was at a trap shoot in Denver in 1985 that Harvey first met the man who would become his future business partner, Bob Jornayvaz, who was also in the oil business. The friendship developed over the decade that followed, and in 1995, Jornayvaz came to Harvey for help on a horizontal drilling project near Moab, Utah.

The project soon evolved into a partnership as each realized how well he complemented the other’s skills: Jornayvaz excelled in the finance side of the oil industry; Harvey was a creative and talented engineer.

Their first company, Intrepid Oil and Gas, was formed in 1996.

The partnership was a success from the start: In the first two years, they bought several wells in the West, most notably an oil well near Moab, Utah, that was so successful they nicknamed it “The Lucky Charm.”

In 1997, sensing an opportunity, they took an interest in a potash mine near Moab that was closing due to declining production. Declining production could mean the mine was tapped out; it could also mean the mine just wasn’t operating efficiently. Knowing the geology of the area, they sensed the latter was true, and their subsequent research confirmed it. All they had to do was figure out a more effective mining technique.

Harvey said the idea came to him out of the blue—“like two pieces of a puzzle suddenly fitting together.” It involved using horizontal drilling techniques to create an intricate lattice of boreholes throughout the potash-bearing rock. Then, by percolating water through the honeycomb, they could dissolve the potash and pump it up to evaporation ponds on the surface. There was nothing new about solution mining, but horizontal drilling had never before been used for potash extraction. It was an entirely new twist. And one that turned out to be highly successful—they doubled production after purchasing the mine in 2000.

They began acquiring new potash mines, applying the same technology; simultaneously, they were exiting the oil business. In 2008, Intrepid Potash went public on the New York Stock Exchange, having grown in just eight years to become the largest potash producer in the U.S., with 750 employees and four operating mines.

“A big part of this true American success story is my partner, Robert Jornayvaz,” said Harvey. “Bob is focused, bright, creative, hard working and has high ethical standards.” His years of experience in finance and investment banking have proved invaluable to the partnership. “It is one thing to have a good idea,” Harvey said, “but it’s quite another thing to raise large amounts of capital from skeptical investors so the idea can be put into practice.”

Clearly both men contributed to their company’s growth, but in very different ways. And if one had to identify a defining act, it was teaming up in the first place; recognizing each other’s talents, and by implication, their own limitations. From the start they were both confident that it would work out well, Harvey said, though he adds, “We didn’t quite think that we would succeed to this level.”

For many years Harvey had contributed to the Colorado School of Mines Foundation, but taking Intrepid public made it possible to dramatically increase this support: The Hugh and Michelle Harvey Foundation was formed following the public offering in April 2008, and discussions about the gift to Mines began shortly thereafter.

Their scholars program reflects the Harveys’ belief in the importance of science and engineering education. “All advances in productivity and standard of living are tied to technological advances,” said Harvey. “I couldn’t ask for a better education than I got at Mines. Now I want to pay it forward.”

After carefully considering eligibility and selection guidelines, Hugh and Michelle designed the scholars program to reward merit in academic performance, outstanding character, leadership and service, with the objective of attracting top students—the best and brightest.

In certain cases students may also be selected for achieving success in the face of adversity—a quality Harvey grew up admiring in his own Italian-born mother, Gina Cantoni. She endured bombings and hunger and the death of her father during World War II, yet remained focused on completing a philosophy degree at the University of Rome. She later met and married an American serviceman, Harvey’s father, and moved to the U.S., where she became a professor of English as a second language, first at Fort Lewis College, then the University of New Mexico and later Northern Arizona University. Now 87, she was actively involved in designing the Harvey Scholars Program and is proud of the part she played in shaping the international portion of the curriculum.

Hugh and Michelle’s children made the program’s travel component a three-generation unanimous decision by voting with their actions. As the finishing touches were being made to the document outlining the scholars program, their son was studying engineering and learning Spanish in Santiago, Chile, while their daughter had flown to Chicago to gain special access to research materials in the Newberry Library.

The Harvey award covers full tuition and is renewable through eight semesters. It may be extended for up to two additional semesters to accommodate travel abroad, participation in the McBride Honors Program, intercollegiate athletics, a double major, the pursuit of a combined BS/MS program, or other enrichment activities.

Casting his mind back to his own days at Mines, Harvey recalls his stay on campus as both tough and fun. The toughest professors, he said, were in the Division of Engineering, and they were also his favorites. Professor Hank Babcock, he recalled, was one of the more eccentric, rousing sleeping students by throwing a piece of chalk at them with great accuracy.

And the fun part? He just laughs. He recalls with pride that he was in Mines’ centennial class (’74). And he remembers with a smile the ore cart pull to the Capitol to kick off E-Days, the Coors Brewery “short tour,” and of course, that summer adventure in Europe with John Wright, a ridiculously heavy suitcase, and an intrepid spirit of adventure.

Digging into Potash
By Erica Siemers

Potash is the common name given to potassium carbonate and other salts rich in potassium. For millennia it has been used as a fertilizer; other ancient uses include the manufacture of glass, ceramics, and, beginning in 500 AD, soap. Before potash was mined, the compound was made by leaching wood ash and then evaporating the solution in large pots. The name of the white residue that remained after all the water had been boiled off was appropriately named potash.

Potash was first mined on an industrial scale in the late 19th century. Approximately 90 percent of the potash mined today is used as a fertilizer; the remaining 10 percent is used in livestock feed supplements and industrial applications. As a key fertilizer ingredient, potash increases crop yields and enhances both water retention and disease resistance in plants. Along with phosphate and nitrogen, potash is an essential ingredient of fertilizer. As ballooning world populations increase the pressure on a finite supply of arable land, an abundant and affordable supply of potash is increasingly critical to feeding the global population.

The potash mined today was primarily deposited by ancient inland seas that were cut off from the ocean and subsequently evaporated. The layers of potassium salts deposited—primarily potassium chloride or “muriate of potash”—are almost invariably mixed with sodium chloride (table salt), which is harmful to most plants and must be separated out.