PRESERVING AND PROTECTING EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH THROUGH AN APPLIED SCIENCE INSTITUTION: PERSPECTIVES FROM RESEARCH STAFF IN ACADEMIA AND THE NATIONAL LABORATORY SYSTEM

A desire to better understand the temporal evolution and growth of the Rio Grande rift brought together principal investigators from the academic (University of New Mexico) and applied (Los Alamos National Laboratory, or LANL) geoscience communities. The PIs’ mutual interest in educational outreach led them to pursue financial support for this research endeavor from the Earthwatch Institute’s Student Challenge Awards Program. Their successfully funded grant allowed them to involve young women in field- and laboratory-based geologic research. While the students received a unique and in-depth experience in scientific research, the PIs received the people-power they needed to execute fieldwork in an expeditious fashion.

The LANL-Earthwatch partnership provides students an opportunity to experience the acquisition of scientific data for real-world applications and others issues relevant to our country and national security. Research staff at LANL have the cooperation and encouragement of LANL’s Community Programs Office, an outstanding internal organization which serves to support educational outreach efforts. However, deeply entrenched challenges exist within such an endeavor: unlike other federal agencies (e.g., NSF, NASA), there is little to no mechanism within LANL programs to invest in educational outreach. Principal investigators are typically restricted in scope of executable scientific work by its relation to the LANL mission, potentially limiting the perpetuity of this LANL relationship with the Earthwatch Institute. The LANL-Earthwatch partnership is highly successful but can currently only sustain itself if research staff dedicate considerable time to search for financial support. From this experience, we conclude that institutions that do applied science should act on their stated philosophy of supporting and educating the next generation of scientists.