Can Community Laboratory Facilities Increase Access and Inclusivity in Geoscience?

Abstract

Geochronology and geochemistry are critical tools in geoscience research and research training, but students and faculty at many institutions have little or no access to the specialized and expensive facilities needed for sample preparation and analysis. Here, we explore whether a community laboratory, dedicated to hosting and training visitors, can help address this inequity by increasing access to specialized geochemical techniques and the resulting data. We report the first three years of outcomes from the Community Cosmogenic Facility, the goal of which is to improve access by making an increasingly important analytic technique more widely available. Although the facility we describe here focuses on cosmogenic nuclide sample preparation, the model we present is viable across the geosciences. Three years of development, assessment, and refinement demonstrate that the community laboratory model increased technique access to undergraduate and graduate students. Women were represented in first‐authored, peer‐reviewed papers at a rate nearly twice that of the broader community. In contrast, the participation of under‐represented groups did not increase over geoscience norms. Our data clearly illustrate that challenges to fostering a diverse geoscience community persist. Proactive interaction with faculty and students at Minority Serving Institutions, cohort‐focused training models, and financial support to visit community laboratories may be future steps toward further diversifying users of community facilities.

Introduction

Quantitative geochemical and isotopic techniques are becoming increasingly central to modern geoscience research and research training (Harrison et al., 2015). Such techniques, which are used for geochronology, measuring process rates, tracing material movement, and analyzing chemical constituents and isotopes, are a rapidly growing part of geoscience (Grunsky & de Caritat, 2020; Mogk & Goodwin, 2012). Accordingly, having access to advanced analytic facilities is becoming a prerequisite for securing grant funding, publishing in high-visibility journals, and generally moving up the academic ladder.

Despite the increasing importance of these laboratory-based techniques in geosciences, only a small portion of our community has access to them (Cramer et al., 2020). Many geochemical and geochronological laboratory techniques are challenging to perform and time consuming to master. Thus, such laboratories tend to exist at well-resourced institutions focusing on graduate students rather than undergraduate students (Bierman et al., 2014), leaving many students at the start of their careers without training in techniques important for advancing into jobs and graduate education (Trott et al., 2020). Many laboratory techniques require sophisticated infrastructure, such as advanced ventilation systems, climate control, access to ultra-pure water, and management of hazardous materials, further restricting the types of institutions that can build and maintain such facilities.

As a result of these limitations, modern laboratory techniques in geoscience are largely unavailable to many members of the community. The absence is particularly acute at community colleges, undergraduate-serving institutions, and colleges and universities that serve students underrepresented in geoscience (Levine et al., 2007; Velasco & de Velasco, 2010). Students of color and those from lower-income and first-generation college families are particularly disadvantaged in terms of access to sophisticated geochemical facilities and the training needed to use such facilities (Bililign, 2019).

Because the current academic structure generally revolves around laboratories that serve single Primary Investigators and their students (the majority of whom are graduate students), such inequities persist and can be self-reinforcing (Bernard & Cooperdock, 2018). Less advantaged institutions have limited ability to host cutting-edge facilities, thus faculty and students at such institutions are less likely to publish in high-profile journals, putting them at a disadvantage when it comes to securing grant funding, employment, and advanced degrees. This is just one of many “hostile obstacles” faced by people who have historically been less represented in science (Asefaw Berhe et al., 2022). These limitations create a cycle that expands rather than closes the economic and opportunity gaps between institutions (Bernard & Cooperdock, 2018), a cycle that is in direct conflict with the National Science Foundation Earth Science 2020–2030 vision statement recommendation to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion in the geosciences (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine, 2020).

The community facility model, in which a laboratory (along with its technical expertise) is open to visiting students and faculty from around the region, country, or world, is one way to level the playing field. Mentored undergraduate research experiences have been shown to improve the recruitment, retention, and career ambitions of historically underrepresented students (Carpi et al., 2017; Hernandez et al., 2018; Jin et al., 2019). Having the ability to visit a new institution and work with different people provides opportunities for growth and networking. Additionally, given that research experience can help students secure positions in advanced degree programs (Hernandez et al., 2018), visiting a community laboratory could facilitate interest in and entry into graduate school. Developing a sense of community and inclusion, a key component of the community laboratory model, has been shown to broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in the sciences (Estrada et al., 2018).

Here, we present the results of a three-year process of developing, testing, and refining a community facility model, the goal of which is to increase access to geochronologic and geochemical techniques. We share these findings, which we believe are transferable to other techniques, in order to illustrate what worked well and to explore opportunities for improvement. Our experience demonstrates that community laboratory facilities have the potential to enhance access to advanced analytic techniques, but that challenges remain in making such techniques widely available to a more diverse community.

Background What Is a Community Laboratory?

The community laboratory model involves the sharing of a laboratory and its technical expertise among the research community. Rather than exclusively serving a single Primary Investigator or institution, a community laboratory is focused on training and hosting students, faculty, and researchers from a variety of institutions. This model usually relies on grant and/or institutional support for some or numerous aspects of laboratory operation. Benefits for the visitors include access to facilities and techniques that are not available on their home campus, hands-on research training, integration into a new community, and interaction with experts and peers outside of their previous experience. Benefits for the host institution include the opportunity to learn from and network with visiting faculty and students, thereby enriching and diversifying the campus experience.

An Example Technique: Cosmogenic Nuclides

We use cosmogenic nuclide sample preparation as an example of a technique that can be adapted to fit the community laboratory model. Cosmognenic nuclides are formed as cosmic rays interact with rock and soil at and near Earth's surface. Thus, cosmogenic nuclide studies are widely applicable to understanding Earth's surface processes. Sample processing is time consuming, uses hazardous acids, and requires a variety of laboratory skills. Each batch of 10 samples requires a week of nearly full time, clean-room, laboratory work after several part-time weeks of quartz isolation and purification. As a result, laboratories for sample preparation are generally confined to a small number of research-focused institutions (Bierman et al., 2014).

Measurement of in situ produced cosmogenic nuclides has become increasingly important and popular in the geosciences. Cosmogenic nuclides have a wide range of societally-relevant applications (Granger et al., 2013). They provide important information about Earth's changing climate by dating glacial retreat (Balco, 2011) and constraining the long-term history of ice sheets (Schaefer et al., 2016). Cosmogenic nuclides can illustrate how landscapes form and evolve by quantifying erosion (Portenga & Bierman, 2011), measuring uplift (Cyr et al., 2010) and incision (McPhillips et al., 2016), tracing sediment movement (Riebe et al., 2015), and understanding how these processes work together (Willenbring & Jerolmack, 2016). Cosmogenic nuclides can be used to understand Earth hazards such as faulting (Tesson et al., 2021), folding (Bender et al., 2019), landslides (Zerathe et al., 2014), and tsunamis (Rixhon et al., 2018), and to understand processes important to humans such as soil development (Heimsath et al., 2012). They have also been used to provide insight into the evolution of human life (Gibbon et al., 2014).

Community Laboratory Goals

The example laboratory we consider here, the Community Cosmogenic Facility (Figure 1), hosts visitors from around the world to prepare their own samples and learn laboratory techniques. The goals of the Community Cosmogenic Facility are: (a) broadening access to geochronologic and geochemical techniques, (b) increasing the breadth of questions being explored with the technique, (c) training the next generation of geoscientists in both specific and transferrable skills, (d) training faculty in laboratory methods to facilitate knowledge sharing, build community, and enhance data quality, and (e) conducting method refinement and developing quality control materials to share with other laboratories. Most of these goals are not discipline-specific and are thus transferable to other laboratories utilizing geochemical, isotopic, or geochronological methods.

Figure 1. Photographs of visitors working in the Community Cosmogenic Facility. (a) Panoramic view of three graduate students in the clean laboratory. (b) Undergraduate and graduate students purifying quartz in the mineral separation laboratory. (c) A University of Vermont graduate student works with a visitor to separate Be, Al, and Ti using column chromatography in the clean laboratory. (d) A visiting graduate student learns transferable skills, such as high-precision massing and pipetting, while preparing her own samples. (e) Three visitors learn laboratory methods during a methods training visit.

History and Development of an Example Community Laboratory Facility

Community laboratory facilities are particularly well-suited to disciplines requiring specialized infrastructure. In the example we explore here, sample preparation for cosmogenic nuclide analysis requires highly specialized facilities, is time-consuming and costly, and uses hazardous materials; hence, cosmogenic nuclide methods are inaccessible to those who lack access to a dedicated laboratory. Purifying quartz (Kohl & Nishiizumi, 1992) (Figure 1b) requires the use and disposal of hydrofluoric acid, which poses safety challenges. Extracting Be and Al from purified quartz (Corbett et al., 2016) is performed in a clean laboratory with filtered air and purified water (Figures 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, and 1e). Isotopic analyses are made using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, which can be performed at only a few facilities in the United States.

Beginning in 2018, the Community Cosmogenic Facility was funded for five years by the National Science Foundation through a specific call for laboratory technician funding; it is one of seven United States geochronology labs supported in this way (Bierman et al., 2018) and the only one focusing on cosmogenic nuclides. National Science Foundation funding supports the salary of the facility manager, which provides for the mentoring and training of visitors, as well as collaboration on visitor projects. The current grant does not include funds to cover the cost of materials, isotopic analyses, travel to the facility, or housing for visitors; accordingly, visitors need to have their own resources to cover these other costs. A typical student project with 20 samples requires at least a month in residence and over $10,000 US dollars in funding to pay for travel, housing, laboratory consumables, and AMS analyses.

A Transferable Model for a Community Laboratory Example Visitation and Collaboration Protocols

Visitors of all levels and backgrounds engage with the Community Cosmogenic Facility in a variety of different ways: (a) individual or group tours comprising several hours, (b) observation visits comprising several days to a week (Figure 1e), and (c) sample processing visits lasting from a week to several months (Figures 1a–1d, 2a, and 2b). Visitors receive one-on-one (Figure 1c) or small group (Figure 1e) training and mentoring for the duration of their time in the laboratory and never work unsupervised.

Figure 2. Introductory Powerpoint slides from two example visitors. (a) An undergraduate student from a Primarily Undergraduate Institution who studied the effects of episodic storm erosion in Puerto Rico (Grande et al., 2021). (b) A graduate student from a PhD-granting institution who studied bedrock fracture controls on hillslope development and topography in California (Neely et al., 2019). Each visited the Community Cosmogenic Facility for about six weeks to purify quartz and extract 10Be.

Involvement throughout the duration of a project is a key element of the Community Cosmogenic Facility's philosophy but varies from project to project depending on the needs and experience levels of the visitors. Laboratory staff have assisted with proposal writing, experimental design, fieldwork planning, sample processing, data reduction, interpretation, conference preparation, and the writing and editing of abstracts and publications. This intellectual involvement is especially critical for including collaborators who have little or no prior background in cosmogenic nuclide techniques and data interpretation.

Visitors who come to process their own samples (Figures 1a–1d, 2a, and 2b) have an immersive, collaborative experience that can last from five days to several months depending on their project and what capabilities, if any, exist at their home institution. Visitors learn to perform all elements of the laboratory process themselves including techniques such as mineral separation and purification (Figure 1b), isotopic dilution (Figure 1d), column chromatography (Figure 1c), Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry analysis, and quality control, many of which are transferable skills to other laboratory methods or career paths. When possible, the Community Cosmogenic Facility strives to host several visitors with similar interests at the same time in order to build community and facilitate collaboration (see Supplemental Data Figure S1 for an example pairing of visitors: two early-career women both working in the Arctic). Visitor training emphasizes safety and collaborative work. Visitors often work either with each other or with University of Vermont graduate and undergraduate students in the laboratory, assisting with and learning about one another's projects (Figure S1c).

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020 represented a significant challenge to the community laboratory model. Due to travel restrictions and campus regulations, the Community Cosmogenic Facility was not able to host visitors and had to cancel numerous in-person visits that had been planned for the spring, summer, and fall of that year. While some projects could be rescheduled, others (especially those involving student theses) could not. Laboratory staff prepared the samples for these visitors in their absence, which allowed collaborators to obtain data for their projects, but meant that they missed out on the one-on-one training and mentoring that is critical to the community facility's mission. These “virtual visitors” are included in the statistics presented below even though they were not physically present.

Example Pre-Visit Protocols

All visitors to the Community Cosmogenic Facility follow the same sequence of pre-visit protocols, which are described on the laboratory's website (www.uvm.edu/cosmolab). They begin the process by sending an application describing their project goals, needs, and timeline, then work with laboratory staff to develop a budget and schedule. After finalizing the schedule, visitors sign a memorandum of understanding that outlines policies on collaboration, payment, and safety while at the laboratory. Visitors are responsible for arranging, booking, and paying for their own travel and housing. Before arrival at the laboratory, all visitors submit (a) a Powerpoint slide introducing themselves and describing their project (Figures 2 and S1), (b) an inventory of their samples and details about sample locations, and (c) a signed safety agreement. They also take online safety training and agree to a laboratory code of conduct. All of the forms described above are available on the laboratory's website for download and to serve as examples for other interested laboratories.

Example Post-Visit Protocols

After their visit to the Community Cosmogenic Facility, visitors return to their home institutions while the samples are sent for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry analysis, a process that typically takes up to several months. The resulting data are sent to both the visitor and laboratory staff. Both perform data reduction independently in order to ensure data quality and consistency, although laboratory staff often teach the process to visitors who are unfamiliar. Visitors then receive a data report that contains pre-made tables suitable for publication so that all necessary data for full re-calculation of ages or erosion rates are included (Dunai & Stuart, 2009; Phillips et al., 2016).

After receiving data, laboratory staff and visitors work collaboratively (with the visitor leading) to develop interpretations, submit conference abstracts, and ultimately write manuscripts for publication. Visitors who are less familiar with cosmogenic nuclide data and interpretations receive additional guidance, which can include assistance with calculating ages and erosion rates, understanding uncertainties, and critically evaluating data limitations and interpretations. Laboratory staff attend most of the major Earth Science conferences in order to meet with previous visitors about their projects and follow-up grant proposals, and to convene a Community Cosmogenic Facility alumni get-together where previous visitors can meet one another and network.

Assessment

In January of 2021, three years after the opening of the Community Cosmogenic Facility, we administered an anonymous online survey to all laboratory users including anyone who visited the laboratory in person, those who visited virtually during the COVID pandemic, and the advisors of student visitors. The survey was administered by an external evaluator under a protocol approved by the Institutional Review Board of the evaluator's institution, and disseminated via Google Forms. It consisted of 12 multiple-response questions focused on demographics, experience in the laboratory, and outcomes. Five of the 12 survey questions invited respondents to explain or elaborate on their responses. We invited 85 individuals to take the survey. The response rate was 74% (n = 63); all survey data are included in the Supplemental Data.

Results Demographics of Community Laboratory Users

In its first three years (2018, 2019, and 2020), access to the Community Cosmogenic Facility allowed many researchers to gain experience with cosmogenic nuclides who would not have been able to do so otherwise. Of the 81 visitors hosted at the laboratory, 70 do not have a cosmogenic nuclide sample preparation facility at their home institution; the other 11 visited either to learn methods to take back to their own developing laboratories, or to exchange methodological ideas based on their own established laboratory protocols. Based on the anonymous survey, 58.3% of respondents would have had no ability to acquire cosmogenic nuclide data in the absence of the Community Cosmogenic Facility. The other 41.7% had other options, although some reported in written responses that these options would not have included in-person visits, would have taken longer, or may have resulted in lower-quality data.

During this timeframe, the Community Cosmogenic Facility collaborated with and hosted 17 undergraduate students, 31 graduate students, 13 research professionals, and 20 faculty members, for a total of 81 laboratory users (Figure 3a). Of those users, 61 came to process their own samples; the other 20 came to learn methods or observe. Of the visitor pool, 47 identify as male and 34 identify as female; however, women were much more represented at the student level, where 47% of undergraduate student visitors and 58% of graduate student visitors identify as female. According to the anonymous survey, 7.9% of laboratory users identify as Asian, 3.2% as Black/African American, 4.8% as Hispanic/Latinx, 74.6% as White, and 4.8% as being of more than one ethnicity; 4.7% chose not to answer this question (Figure 3a).

Figure 3. Data about Community Cosmogenic Facility users and their experiences. (a) User demographics. Details about academic position, institution type, and gender identity refer to the 81 laboratory visitors. Race identity, because it was collected anonymously through the survey, refers to the pool of survey respondents. (b) User experiences; all data were collected anonymously through the survey.

Laboratory visitors came from 24 US states and 10 countries (Figure 4a). With regards to their home institutions, 17 came from institutions that grant only BA/BS degrees (e.g., Figures 2a), 10 from institutions that grant an MS as the highest degree in the relevant program, and 47 from institutions that grant a PhD (e.g., Figure 2b); the remaining seven visitors came from non-academic research institutions or agencies such as the United States Geological Survey or equivalents abroad (Figure 3a). Because the Community Cosmogenic Facility often hosts more than one visitor from the same institution, the 81 visitors considered here came from 50 unique institutions. No visitors came from Historically Black Colleges and Universities or Tribal Colleges and Universities. Although no visitors came from Hispanic Serving Institutions (as defined by >25% Hispanic population), the laboratory hosted six visitors from four different Emerging Hispanic Institutions (15%–25% Hispanic population). Several students from small state colleges also visited.

Figure 4. World maps showing the locations of visitor home institutions ((a) color-coded based on the institution type) and visitor project locations ((b) color-coded based on the project type).

Visitors who came to prepare their own samples focused on a wide array of geographic regions and applications (Figures 2 and 4b). Their projects are located across much of the United States and abroad including Canada, Greenland, Svalbard, the North Atlantic Ocean, Norway, Mongolia, the Himalayan region, Italy, Malaysia, Borneo, Australia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominica, Brazil, and Antarctica. While many projects focused on quantifying erosion rates or dating glacial retreat (the more common uses of cosmogenic nuclides), others focused on active and past tectonics, soil development, sea level dynamics, glacial sedimentation, long-term glacial burial, fluvial and terrace dynamics, and hillslope processes (Figure 4b).

Although the primary focus of the Community Cosmogenic Facility is generally individual visitors, the laboratory also hosted numerous larger-group tours during its first three years. Laboratory staff led several “open house” visits associated with conferences, including one during the 2018 Geological Society of America Northeastern Section Meeting and one as part of a fieldtrip for the 2018 New England Intercollegiate Geology Conference. Laboratory staff also hosted tours for numerous local undergraduate science classes, both in geosciences and in other disciplines.

Experiences and Outcomes for Community Laboratory Users

Based on the anonymous survey, laboratory users report a wide range of experiences and outcomes (note that this includes responses from in-person laboratory visitors, advisors of student visitors, and COVID-era “virtual visitors”; see Supplemental Data). Community Cosmogenic Facility collaborators learned laboratory methods (66.1%) and received guidance on their projects (74.2%). They worked with University of Vermont faculty or staff (66.1%) and students (62.9%), collaborated with other visitors (41.9%), and learned about projects other than their own (62.9%; Figure 3b). Based on the data they generated, laboratory users published or plan to publish a conference abstract (62.9%), a scientific paper (69.4%), and/or a student thesis (67.7%; Figure 3b). Laboratory collaborators presented their data at scientific conferences (46.8%) and met other alumni at conferences (29%). Looking forward, 32.3% have used or will use their data to write a grant proposal (Figure 3b). Almost all visitors (93.5%) report that working at or in collaboration with the Community Cosmogenic Facility heightened their sense of community in the geosciences.

Community Cosmogenic Facility users have, at the time of final revision of this paper, published their data in 11 peer-reviewed journal articles, with an additional five journal articles currently in the press or in review (see Supplemental Data for a full list of publications). Of these 16 publications, students or post-doctoral researchers are the first author on 11, including two female undergraduate students and four female graduate student first authors. Community Cosmogenic Facility users have also authored 68 conference abstracts so far (see Supplemental Data for a full list of abstracts), with graduate students or post-doctoral researchers the lead author on 50 and undergraduate students the lead author on 13. Laboratory staff authored two publications about quality control materials, an entry about cosmogenic nuclides for the Encyclopedia of Geology, and several conference abstracts targeted at alerting audiences to opportunities at the Community Cosmogenic Facility.

Discussion

Thus far, the community facility model we explore here has had many successes; these include providing increased access to a rapidly-growing field, engaging undergraduate and graduate students, increasing the participation of women and their rate of peer-reviewed publication, promoting new uses of cosmogenic nuclides in geographically diverse locations, and increasing the overall availability of cosmogenic analyses. However, the model faces ongoing challenges, particularly with regard to diversity. The racial and ethnic diversity among those visiting the Community Cosmogenic Facility does not represent an improvement as compared to geoscience as a whole. Below we examine these successes and shortcomings in more detail and suggest paths forward to increase the impact and accessibility of community facilities in general.

Positive Impacts of This Community Laboratory Facility

Survey data clearly demonstrate that the community facility model has worked well to increase the participation of students and faculty in cosmogenic nuclide science. Having access to the community facility allowed students who attend primarily undergraduate institutions to have authentic research experiences and gain laboratory skills unavailable on their campuses. Similarly, graduate students, faculty members, and professionals at institutions without such facilities learned laboratory skills and gathered data, effectively improving access to a technique that has traditionally been unavailable to most of the community. Our experiences, coupled with the survey data, demonstrate that if shared facilities provide mentoring, guidance, and training, those in the community with awareness of the techniques and sufficient resources to fund their travel and analyses will capitalize on the opportunity to visit and learn.

Statistics from the Community Cosmogenic Facility's first three years show that the community facility model has increased the participation and success of women in the field of cosmogenic nuclide analysis. During this time span, the participation of female undergraduate and graduate students at the Community Cosmogenic Facility exceeded their representation in geoscience, slightly at the undergraduate level (47 vs. 43%) and significantly at the graduate level (58 vs. 39%) (AGI, 2019a). Of the 16 publications written by Community Cosmogenic Facility users, eight were first-authored by women, representing a nearly two-fold increase over norms in the field of geoscience (Pico et al., 2020). Gains in women's participation in isotope geoscience are critical steps toward decreasing gender disparities at the faculty and professional levels (AGI, 2019b).

The Community Cosmogenic Facility has promoted a wide range of applications of cosmogenic nuclides in areas of the world where such measurements are rare. Users have conducted cosmogenic nuclide work in under-studied, low-latitude regions including Cuba, Dominica, Puerto Rico, Malaysia, and Borneo (Figure 4b); most of this work has engaged with local communities and local collaborators. Many projects completed in the community facility focused on novel applications of cosmogenic nuclides including dating fault scarps, studying soil development processes, understanding episodic storm erosion, and constraining post-glacial sea level (Figure 4b). Recent publications lead by facility alumni span a wide variety of topics including Puerto Rico storm erosion (Grande et al., 2021) (Figure 2a), active tectonics in Alaska (Bender et al., 2019), Antarctic soil development (Diaz et al., 2021), California hillslope development (Neely et al., 2019) (Figure 2b), and multi-million year Greenland Ice Sheet history (Christ et al., 2019). The spectrum of conference presentations has been significantly broader (see Supplemental Data). We suspect this diversity of thinking stems from inviting new people with new ideas, who otherwise would not have had access or exposure to cosmogenic nuclide techniques, into an environment where they can build on established research and pursue novel questions.

The community facility model is efficient, cutting overall costs and improving education and training. Building specialized facilities, equipping them, and staffing them are costly endeavors, severely limiting the number and type of institutions that can host such laboratories. Most single investigator facilities do not run at capacity, an inefficient use of resources as laboratories may sit idle between projects. Students in many single-investigator facilities may work with a relatively small group of peers, often all from the same institution. In contrast, the community facility inherently involves the sharing of resources and personnel, yielding a more efficient and more integrated system in which people from many different institutions work together. This sense of community was overwhelmingly reported by survey respondents and is likely the cornerstone of many of the Community Cosmogenic Facility’s successes.

Where the Current Model Has Come Up Short

Although the presence of the Community Cosmogenic Facility increased access to cosmogenic nuclide techniques and included new people and ideas, it did not increase the racial and ethnic diversity of people engaged in isotope geoscience. Of the visitor pool, 21.7% identify as non-white (Figure 3a); of those people, 12% fit into the category of “underrepresented minority” as used in AGI (2020). This visitor profile is similar to the racial demographics of geoscience as a whole, in which underrepresented minority students receive 15.7% of Bachelor's degrees, 10% of Master's degrees, and 6.7% of Doctorate degrees (AGI, 2021). Our failure to diversify users of the community laboratory facility beyond the current norms of the geoscience reflects both structural issues (e.g., the paucity of geoscience and equivalent departments at Minority Serving Institutions) and the fact that we did not successfully recruit a more diverse pool of users.

Barriers to Diversification of Community Facilities in Geoscience

There are clearly barriers to participation in community laboratory facilities. Lack of awareness of the problems isotope geoscience can solve is a fundamental impediment. Overwhelmingly, Community Cosmogenic Facility visitors came from institutions that have geoscience departments and thus familiarity with geochemical and isotopic techniques. Using conference presentations, email announcements, postcards, and word of mouth, we broadly advertised the existence of the community facility to the geologic community; this strategy effectively targeted an audience of geoscientists but failed to reach audiences outside the field. Our disciplinary focus on geoscience resulted in a user base that mirrors the overall demographics in the field of geoscience, generally lacking in diversity (AGI, 2020). Removing this barrier will require outreach to a much broader community, including those not identifying as geoscientists and including institutions without a geoscience or equivalent department.

The cost of cosmogenic nuclide research, even with the availability of a community facility, is also a barrier. Although National Science Foundation support covers visitor training and mentoring, the Community Cosmogenic Facility currently does not have support to help visitors fund travel and lodging, the cost of laboratory consumables, or the cost of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry analyses (although the Purdue Rare Isotope Measurement Laboratory seed grant program and the Geological Society of America Awards for Geochronology Student Research program have supported analytic costs for some visitors). Thus, the pool of potential visitors is currently limited to those who can secure at least modest grant or institutional support. This is likely why the community laboratory has been more successful at recruiting visitors from well-resourced undergraduate institutions (Figure 4a), where access is a greater limitation than expense. Additional funding targeted at helping under-resourced students visit laboratories away from their home institutions could help to bridge this gap.

The inability or disinclination to spend time away from home is another potential barrier. While visiting a laboratory elsewhere may be an exciting opportunity for some students, the inherent time away from home intrinsic to such a model could represent a significant deterrent for others. This is especially likely in the case of students who need to seek summer employment for financial reasons (Estrada et al., 2016), people with caregiving duties, and people unfamiliar with long-distance or long-duration travel. Such challenges with time away from home are most likely to impact certain groups disproportionately; for example, women tend to carry the majority of caregiving duties (AGI, 2021). Developing a model with more flexibility, such as one involving a short visit supplemented with online learning and hands-on help from a student at the host institution, may help make the community facility more accessible to those who are unable to travel for long durations.

Finally, cultural barriers also exist. The Community Cosmogenic Facility is not well-equipped to host visitors who do not have a solid foundation in written and spoken English, a significant impediment for certain international visitors or recent immigrants. For visitors from abroad, the logistics of traveling to the United States represent limitations; in several instances, interested visitors with funding to travel to the Community Cosmogenic Facility were unable to secure visas due to domestic policies toward their countries of origin. Developing alternative models involving the partnering of collaborators who are unable to travel with students at the host institution could provide a path forward for making the hands-on work happen even in cases when travel cannot.

Future Directions: How Community Facilities Can Do Better

Increasing the diversity of those served by community facilities in geoscience will require moving beyond current approaches to recruiting and supporting visitors. Such outreach will likely require an intentional approach to involve students and faculty from outside the traditional geoscience pool, mentored field-to-conference experiences, and resources to ensure that the availability of institutional or grant funding does not stand in the way of learning and career progress. Here, we explore several possible approaches that may address multiple of the above barriers.

During the summer of 2022, we will test a model of active engagement with Minority Serving Institutions to determine if such outreach could increase diversity at the community facility. The model involves campus recruiting and information sessions for students and faculty, support for cohort-based fieldwork, mentored time at the Community Cosmogenic Facility with students processing samples they collected in the field, and student attendance at professional meetings with program mentors. Critical to this model is engagement with disciplines other than geoscience including chemistry, engineering, environmental science, and natural resources; such departments are more common at Minority Serving Institutions and approach many of the same environmental issues faced by geoscientists but through a different disciplinary lens.

Educational adaptations to the COVID-19 pandemic have shown the power of remote learning, which provides new opportunities to engage with a more diverse population of students and faculty. During the pandemic, we created a series of instructional videos to share online for the benefit of collaborators who are unable to travel; these videos are available through the Community Cosmogenic Facility YouTube channel. All laboratory methods are available on the laboratory's website and include photographs of each process. The Community Cosmogenic Facility also has Instagram and Facebook accounts that are used to virtually acquaint visitors with each other and to provide photographs and videos that illustrate important laboratory processes. These passive engagement opportunities are unlikely on their own to increase participation, but they provide the foundation on which remote learning programs or hybrid programs could be built.

Providing targeted funding to underrepresented students to visit community laboratory facilities may also help to increase participation. Even with focused recruiting, the high cost of geochemical and isotopic analyses will continue to limit participation to those with substantial resources. Including outreach funds in grants that support community laboratories, or creating opportunities for companion grants, would ensure that cost is not a barrier to participation. Community laboratories could also partner with established summer internship programs like the Research Experiences for Undergraduates program, which are effective in attracting underrepresented students (Dalbotten et al., 2017; Ward et al., 2018), forming a multi-institution pathway to graduate school.

Conclusions

Community laboratories make efficient use of existing infrastructure and knowledge to create a pathway to geochemical data for those who would otherwise lack access, thereby providing more equitable opportunities across the field. In its first three years, the community facility example we discuss here hosted 81 visitors from around the world, 70 of whom have no comparable facility at their own institution. However, numerous barriers still exist, limiting the participation of students and faculty from underrepresented groups. Some of these barriers are structural, for example, the lack of geoscience departments at Minority Serving Institutions. Other barriers are practical, such as the high cost of sample preparation, sample analysis, travel, and housing. Continued refinement of the community facility model, in particular developing innovative outreach strategies and funding for travel and sample preparation costs, may effectively address these limitations to further broaden participation.

Acknowledgments

Funding and support for the Community Cosmogenic Facility are provided through the National Science Foundation (EAR-1735676), the Lintilhac Foundation, and the University of Vermont. We thank four anonymous reviewers for improving the manuscript.

Data Availability Statement

This manuscript contains no new primary scientific data. Data from the survey of community laboratory visitors and their academic advisors is publicly available online through the Dryad repository at the following location: Corbett, Lee; Bierman, Paul; Semken, Steven; Whittaker, Joseph (2021), Survey data for: "Can community laboratory facilities increase access and inclusivity in geoscience?", Dryad, Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1c59zw3wm.