An important mission of our lab is to provide training in geochronology data acquisition and interpretation to those outside our immediate research group at CU. We accomplish this through several major avenues.

First, we routinely welcome visitors to the CU TRaIL, including undergraduates, graduate students, and senior scientists. Our visitors gain experience sample preparation and are exposed to the steps associated with (U-Th)/He analysis.

I also played a lead role in establishing the AGeS (Awards for Geochronology Student research) Program. I am the lead-PI, co-founder, and co-director of this initiative. Initially envisioned in 2013 and first funded by NSF in 2014, AGeS is a competitive grant program aimed at broadening access to geochronology data and expertise by offering graduate students up to $10,000 to visit geochronology labs for a week or more to acquire data and be mentored by geochronologists on a project of joint interest (Flowers et al., 2018). As of Spring 2022, AGeS-Grad has been funded by two NSF awards, run 6 proposal cycles, seen 331 submitted proposals, and made 77 awards to graduate students to carry out new collaborative geochronology research. The list of 62 AGeS labs and >100 geochronology mentors on the AGeS website, along with detailed information about every AGeS lab, provides an important resource for the broader Earth science community. The AGeS-DiG (Diversity in Geochronology) program was launched as a pilot in 2022, and is aimed at expanding access to geochronology for those underrepresented in the Earth sciences. During its first proposal cycle AGeS-DiG funded 6 projects averaging ~$14,350 each and saw 16 submitted proposals.

Third, we have co-organized several short courses on geochronology and thermochronology to promote broader understanding of these techniques. These include:

• “AGeS Geochronology Workshop”. 1.5 day GSA short course to be held in Boulder, CO before the GSA Annual Meeting in Denver, October 2022. Co-organized with Ramon Arrowsmith (ASU) and Jim Metcalf (CU-Boulder).
• “EarthScope Institute: Geochronology and the Earth Sciences.” 2-day GSA short course in Vancouver, Canada, October 2014. Co-organized with Ramon Arrowsmith (ASU), Jim Metcalf (CU-Boulder), Tammy Rittenour (USU), and Blair Schoene (Princeton).
•  “An Introduction to Low-Temperature Thermochronology.” 1.25-day short course at the African Earth Observatory Network, Port Elizabeth, South Africa August 2013. Attended by 19 diverse African graduate students and postdocs. Co-organized by Flowers and PhD student Jess Stanley
•  “An Introduction to the Theory and Methods of (U-Th)/He Thermochronology.” 1-day GSA short course at the CU TRaIL October 2013. Co-organized by Flowers and Metcalf.