Building Capacity for the U.S. Mineral Resources Workforce: Proceedings of a Workshop (2024)

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Introduction and Context

The extraction of mineral resources provides the raw materials necessary to produce the products and technologies on which the global economy depends. Effectively and efficiently extracting mineral resources involves expertise in a wide range of areas such as mineral resources identification, delineation, land use evaluation, environmental and social impact evaluation, processing, and reclamation. However, many of the academic programs that have historically educated and trained the U.S. minerals workforce are facing significant challenges, including difficulty with attracting students and maintaining financial viability, raising concerns about the future of the U.S. minerals industry. At the request of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Mineral Resources Program, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a workshop to consider how the United States can build the capacity of federal and state agencies, academia, and the private sector to meet U.S. minerals workforce needs.

The workshop, titled “Building Capacity for the U.S. Mineral Resources Workforce,” was supported by USGS and hosted by the National Academies on January 23–24, 2024. The event convened over 150 expert speakers and participants representing academic researchers and program administrators, mineral resources industry interests, and state and federal agencies. Over the course of the 2-day workshop, attendees considered the skills anticipated to be needed for a future workforce in mineral resources, how higher education programs can best prepare their students for careers that support mineral resource development and related fields, possible models for strengthening U.S. higher education programs in relevant fields, and the types of support higher education programs may need to meet U.S. minerals workforce demands and increase the supply of technical workers in the field.

The biographies of the workshop planning committee are found in Appendix A, followed by the Statement of Task for this activity in Appendix B and the workshop agenda in Appendix C. Following welcoming remarks and opening presentations to set the stage for the subsequent discussions, the workshop was organized into five sessions. The first session focused on mineral resources programs at universities and the overall context in which they operate. The second focused on disciplines and skills relevant to a future mineral resources workforce. The third session examined opportunities to support students and faculty through research funding and partnerships, and the fourth focused on preparing students through internships, professional development, and mentorship. The fifth session focused on improving worker retention. To complement and expand upon the presentations and discussions within these sessions, participants also split into breakout groups to consider opportunities for growing interest among university and upper-level high school students.

This proceedings of a workshop summarizes the presentations and discussions that occurred during each of these sessions. It was produced by rapporteurs on behalf of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine based on recordings, slides, and transcripts from the workshops. It is intended as a factual reflection of the discussions at the workshops and does not represent consensus views or recommendations of the National Academies.

Eric Riggs, California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, and Colin Williams, USGS, welcomed participants to the workshop. Riggs, who served as chair of the workshop’s planning committee, described the workshop’s goal of identifying the skills needed by the future mineral resources workforce to inform the efforts of higher education, industry, and agency partners to attract more university students and prepare them to join the minerals pipeline. While he said that opportunities to support this pipeline in early education deserve consideration, he noted that the workshop was designed to focus on upper-level high school (e.g., 12th grade) and beyond. Additionally, he noted that guidance from the sponsor led the planning committee to slightly emphasize the upstream end of the supply chain (e.g., exploration, mining, processing), although the full supply chain was within the scope of the statement of task.

Williams provided context on the motivations behind the workshop. A primary driver is the Energy Act of 2020, which enables USGS to collaborate with other federal partners and with the National Academies to design a program to support a workforce for the domestic critical minerals supply chain.¹ To help inform these efforts, Williams encouraged workshop participants to take a creative approach, balance a variety of professional skill sets, and focus on opportunities to support long-term sustainability in workforce development programs. Closing, he added that the graduates of programs supported by this effort will play a crucial role in the future success of the minerals industry and the national security landscape. “A good program in this field can make a difference,” Williams said. “When you set up the right environment, and you set up the right funding structure, and you have some exceptional faculty members and staff, you can rebuild the minerals resource [workforce].”

ESTABLISHING A SUSTAINABLE WORKFORCE ROAD MAP

Murray Hitzman, Ireland Research Centre in Applied Geosciences, University College Dublin, set the stage for the workshop with a brief presentation on the larger context of mining in society today. In thinking about mineral resources, Hitzman challenged participants to take a broad perspective, encompassing not only formally designated critical metals, but also building materials needed for sustainable infrastructure and materials recycled within a circular economy. He also emphasized the need to recognize how societal perceptions of the mineral resources industry influence its ability to attract students and cultivate a strong workforce. “Society doesn’t like mining, and that’s really important,” he said. The counterpoint to this perception is that mining is essential to accessing materials that will be instrumental in overcoming current environmental, economic, and security challenges and creating a sustainable, decarbonized future. He suggested that mineral resources could be reframed as “Earth materials” to help the public, and a potential future workforce, connect the field with these important goals.

He noted that mining requires a workforce with multiple and diverse skill sets. These include geoscience and geostatistics; a range of engineering subdisciplines (e.g., mining, chemical, civil, geological, electrical, and mechanical engineering); metallurgy and materials science; mathematics, data analytics, computer science and technology; environmental science, social sciences and the humanities; and professional disciplines such as accounting, legal, and logistics. Hitzman highlighted several examples of emerging companies that leverage these diverse skill sets and are drawing a new workforce to the minerals industry, including companies that use state-of-the-art computer science tools (e.g., artificial intelligence, machine learning) for mineral exploration, emphasize ethical business practices, and focus on extracting valuable metals from mine waste.

In considering the goals of the workshop, Hitzman suggested reframing the traditional image of a workforce “pipeline,” which he sees as an outdated analogy evocative of built systems and fossil fuels. Instead, he proposed viewing the goal as akin to cultivating a tree-and-roots system—a sustainable, living, and nature-based image—to better reflect how a well-trained workforce can be developed, with a taproot for the core disciplines of geoscience, engineering, and metallurgy and lateral roots pulling in essential expertise in public policy, humanities, social sciences, and communication. These diverse disciplines form the root system from which a creative, sustainable, strong, and secure U.S. minerals industry grows.

DESIGNING FUTURE UNIVERSITY PROGRAMS

Misael Cabrera, University of Arizona School of Mining and Mineral Resources, discussed how university programs can attend to the needs of both students and employers in designing educational programs. To illustrate, he highlighted how his university has sought to address the mining industry’s demand for talent through multifaceted efforts to identify needed skills and overcome barriers to student recruitment.

To meet the demands of a growing population and a changing climate, the United States may benefit from an abundant supply of critical minerals and a workforce capable of handling every step of its supply chain. Academia plays a crucial role in designing, and continually iterating upon, programs for sustaining this critical workforce. For example, the University of Arizona created its School of Mining and Mineral Resources as an interdisciplinary unit with faculty from across the entire university. Deliberately avoiding the siloed structure common among academic institutions, the school advances seven core functions. These include K–12 outreach, student recruitment, student success, curricular innovation, marketing, research, and faculty engagement. Across these functions, the school integrates into its engagement and education programming the importance of mining and minerals to everyday life. Significant to the program has been the establishment of a sustainable materials minor that students from any major can declare.

For academic programs to succeed, Cabrera stressed, they need to be built around the needs of their two most numerous stakeholders and end users: the students who will learn the curriculum and the companies who will hire the graduates. This means attending to what is needed to attract the mineral resources workforce of the future, as well as what is needed to prepare them for success. In surveys conducted to examine these questions, the University of Arizona found that most students lacked an understanding of what mining is and how their interests can fit into it, but many expressed an openness to considering a career in mining if positions were available within their primary areas of interest (Banta et al., 2021). This was true even among a majority of students who said they agreed with the statement that “mining harms the environment,” suggesting that it is possible to overcome negative perceptions of mining.

Cabrera noted that researchers conducted interviews with business leaders to investigate needs and perceptions among employers in the mineral resources industry. The results indicated that finding qualified talent ranks among employers’ top challenges. In terms of skills, employers reported seeking workers who are well rounded, willing to collaborate, and able to pair technical skills such as artificial intelligence and data analytics with an awareness of the environmental, social, and governance context of the mining industry. These insights were instrumental in helping faculty and administrators set priorities and approaches for the School of Mining and Mineral Resources. Cabrera closed by indicating that the University of Arizona’s approach for the School of Mining and Mineral Resources is just one model for addressing workforce needs, but that “we will continue to iterate on it until we get it right. And the reason for that is that the call to action is urgent.”