Community-Based Professional Development in Core Facilities: ABRF and CTLS Case Studies

The shift toward the shared scientific resource model (core facilities) has resulted in a growing scientific workforce whose roles extend beyond technical expertise to include customer service, business management, and leadership soft skills. Competency in these areas is critical to success, but formal training is rare, making mentoring, coaching, and job shadowing essential tools for professional development and career sustainability within core facilities. Two professional associations, the Association for Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF) and Core Technologies for Life Sciences (CTLS), have developed mentoring and job shadowing programs to address these needs. The ABRF Mentoring Program, launched in 2016, has undergone multiple iterations, revealing key lessons around flexibility, mentor recruitment, expectation setting, relationship building, and the limits of highly automated platforms. In parallel, the CTLS Mentoring Program, initiated in 2022, emphasizes low barriers to participation, informality, and external perspectives. Both programs note reciprocal learning between mentors and mentees as a valuable outcome to program participation. Complementing mentorship, the CTLS Job Shadowing Programme provides short, immersive, peer-to-peer experiential learning focused on facility operations and management, yielding bidirectional benefits for both visitors and hosts. These initiatives are valuable member benefits for their respective professional associations. Their success highlights the important role of human connection in professional growth and demonstrates that lightly structured, community-driven programs with continuous feedback can effectively support diverse career paths in core facilities. As core facility careers continue to expand, these programs will remain critical to building a resilient, skilled, and interconnected research infrastructure workforce.