BUILDING WORKFORCE CAPACITY THROUGH THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT: ADAPTING GEOSCIENCE CURRICULA

A strong workforce for U.S. based mining and processing is vital for our critical minerals industry and educating geoscientists to build our workforce capacity is key for our future. However, there are currently many barriers facing this, including mistrust in the minerals industry and misunderstanding of how the modern industry operates. My experiences from mineral exploration in Greenland to working in platinum mines in South Africa highlighted for me many of the reasons for why these perceptions exist, but also that there can be substantial differences, for the better, in U.S.-based operations.

This contribution discusses how I use these experiences in building my teaching and research programmes, with the idea that small changes can make a big difference in perceptions. There are number of ways that critical minerals and responsible mining practices can be introduced, from simply discussing uses of minerals to comparing mining practices across the world. This approach overwhelmingly changed the views of students, in introductory courses, on mining in the U.S. from negative to positive. Other small changes include improving accessibility of materials and relating complicated concepts to everyday things students are more familiar with. More substantial curricula changes can also work towards building our workforce and to this aim I designed a course called “Mineral Resources and Sustainable Development” to explore many aspects of the industry from geological characteristics of ore deposits to how to develop social licences for responsible mining. The goal of this is to educate our future mine geologists, alongside our lawyers and policy makers, amongst others to provide them with a foundation for understanding geologic, social, environmental and economic issues associated with extraction of mineral resources.