CMI education and outreach ranges from youth to adult, with an emphasis on workforce development
- August: To help prepare the future workforce, CMI workforce development work included a teacher training workshop on August 28 with a Colorado School of Mines partnership NEXUS, Mines Admissions and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Together with Rocky Mountain Math Engineering Science Achievement (RM MESA), they helped prepare teachers to better work with their traditionally underserved and underrepresented students by providing tools, technologies, resources and collaborative partnerships. This partnership supported the delivery of programs for 11 in person and three remote teachers representing six different districts in Colorado participating in the Rocky Mountain MESA program, plus six Mines graduate students working in the schools, two community representatives (interviewees for engineering design activity) and a delivery team of two CMI, two NEXUS, Mines Admissions director and two NREL education outreach coordinator team members. Eight additional teachers will review the recording within the next two weeks as part of the RM MESA program. These teachers reach 330 to 600 underserved students. CMI education resources (tool kit, lesson repository and Museum) were showcased at the beginning of the workshop and throughout the various sessions. At workshops end, teachers were able to visit the CMI exhibit at the museum.
- February: The 9th annual National Engineers Week event that CMI coordinates with Colorado School of Mines Admissions and Lockheed Martin alumni of Mines this year went virtual, and was able to reach more people than ever before. On February 23, the event included an introduction from CMI's Cynthia Howell, welcome from CMI Deputy Director Rod Eggert and Mines president Paul Johnson. When President Johnson asked attendees to note in the chat box where they were from and if they'd been admitted to Mines, future students from across the United States quickly responded -- from Hawaii and Alaska and across the contiguous states. The 181 guests from across the nation included incoming admitted freshmen, Colorado high school and middle school students and teachers, and guests. Lockheed Martin presenters included a key note from Danielle Richey on Robots as Human Partners in Space and review of Lockheed Martin history of participating in space missions, including the recent Mars rover named Perseverence and missions still in development, including the gateway that is planned for repeated use for missions to the moon and developing a lunar habitat. After the Lockheed Martin video, presentations and discussion, the high school and middle school participants joined virtual breakout rooms to engage in a virtual dialogue of innovations and ideas and college and career pathways with Lockheed Martin professionals and Mines undergraduate and graduate students. The following day, dozens of parents and family of incoming Mines freshmen met to hear information about Mines from Mines student and professor experiences/perspectives. In earlier years, these sessions were held concurrently with the student sessions. This year, they were connecting on Zoom for a welcome from Mines and Lockheed Martin and virtual dialogue about Mines offerings.
- CMI exhibit at Mines Museum of Earth Science: CMI Education and Workforce Development efforts are led by Team member Colorado School of Mines. Cynthia Howell has led interns in the process of creating and updating an exhibit in the Mines Museum of Earth Science, which displays the importance of critical materials mining and research in diversifying supply, developing substitutes and driving reuse and recycling. For National Intern Day, CMI social media highlighted several current and past interns who have been instrumental in the CMI exhibit: Mandi Hutchinson was on the creation team of the museum exhibit based on her Geology graduate work on rare earth elements. She developed resources for how to create an exhibit that are available on the CMI website LINK, Emily Sparks joined CMI as an undergraduate intern for the summer and is responsible for the development of the exhibit, connecting materials to energy and in particular renewable energy. She is a docent who leads tours through the exhibit, and Yamah Nabiyar is a graduate student in Mineral and Energy Economics. He is working with CMI on mapping projects, including one for locations of CMI's dozens of Team members and Affiliates and one for locations of the world's REE resources.
- CMI mentors interns: CMI offers internships through a variety of programs. In 2021, Joseph Mattocks was selected to serve at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as part of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Program. He was a graduate student at Penn State, working with the CMI project led by David Reed at Idaho National Laboratory "Biomaterials for Critical Material Dissolution, Recovery and Separation." Other examples include:
- Stephanie Aurelius won a poster contest at Colorado School of Mines. She works with CMI project "Biogechemical Impacts of Wastes from Critical Materials Recovery" led by Yoshiko Fujita at Idaho National Laboratory. The Graduate Research and Discovery Symposium (GRADS) is an annual conference at Colorado School of Mines to highlight research conducted by Mines graduate students. The conference consists of oral and poster presentations on topics ranging from experimental techniques to earth science. Aurelius's poster on research on rare earths and antibiotic resistance titled "Rare earth elements and antibiotic resistance in wastewater microbial communities" placed first in posters in the Earth Science & Biology category.
- Catherine House presented a poster on Ion Exchange Chromatography at the 2021 AIChE (American Institute of Chemical Engineers) National Student Conference in Boston, and won second place in the division. House attends New Mexico Tech and was an intern at Idaho National Laboratory through the Minority Serving Institution Partnership Program. House worked with David Reed at INL, where she won first place in the intern poster competition.
- Abhishek Sarkar, CMI postdoctoral scholar at Ames Laboratory has been named a winner of the 2021 Postdoctoral Research Excellence Award by the Iowa State University Graduate College and the ISU Postdoctoral Association (PDA). The Postdoctoral Scholar Research Excellence Award honors postdoctoral scholars who have made innovative and significant research contributions to their field of study. Postdocs nominated for this award must have substantially shaped research that significantly advanced knowledge in their field. Additionally, their research must have been accepted (or be under review) for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
- CMI Deputy for the Developing Substitutes has won the Postdoctoral Mentor award from the Iowa State University Graduate College and the ISU Postdoctoral Association (PDA). This award recognizes principal investigators’ excellence in their mentorship of postdoctoral scholars. The purpose of the award is to promote a collaborative research environment for postdoctoral scholars at Iowa State, eventually leading to their successful transitions to the next stage in their career. Two faculty members will be selected yearly for this award. Principal investigators nominated for this award should display excellence in the quality of the scientific training and career-oriented mentoring they provide to postdocs.
- CMI webinars are offered nearly monthly, and most are recorded. CMI webinars in 2021 include CMI researchers, CMI partners, and guest speakers. Link to CMI webinars
For further information please contact:
Cynthia Howell
Research Faculty, Education, Training and Outreach