Improvement of a syllabus on environmental protection designed for mineral and mining engineering students in Bulgaria

The University of Mining and Geology in Sofia as a unique academic Institution engaged in training graduates to work in the field of mining and geological prospecting faces the need for modification and updating its curriculum, for being able to meet the challenges of European educational standards like Institution accreditation, ECTS, etc. In a smaller scale, this is particularly relevant to the Department of Mineral Processing which is one of the largest Departments (in the University) and is engaged in training students for the entire raw materials (non-petroleum) industry: ores, coal and industrial minerals. Despite the drastic reduction in great number undergraduate specialisations, the specialization “Mineral Processing” remains in the Governmental Register released by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technologies. Therefore in this new situation, there is a necessity to verify and to parallel the existing syllabus to the one practiced in a similar Departments in the EU countries and more precisely to develop undergraduate and graduate courses to include risk and hazard assessment, environmental protection and related matters.