Registration is now open for our “Fall” cohorts of Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF), Nurturing Online Communities (NOC), and Project Management for Scientists (PMB)!
These trainings will round out our offerings for 2025. This blog post will give you a sense of who each training is designed for and how they connect to the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program. We’ve also created a new infographic detailing the impact of CEF on our 350+ CEF graduates and the communities they serve. If you’re considering the course, but need documentation to back up your professional development funding request, hopefully this will help!
If you have any questions, please let us know by emailing training@cscce.org.
Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals
CEF is our foundational training in STEM community management, and the upcoming cohort, CEF25F, will be our 20th! Last year, we published a medium-term evaluation of the course, which describes the many different ways CEF has positively impacted the individuals who took the training and the communities they support. We’re also starting to see a broader impact on the STEM ecosystem as a whole, with community management as a profession being recognized as a vital part of scientific progress.
CEF offers a member-centric approach to community management. The training begins by building a shared understanding of what it means to build a community, defining shared purposes and goals, and supports learners in getting to know their members better. With this information in hand, we review their current content and programming and, using the CSCCE Community Participation Model, identify gaps that could be addressed by strategic engagement planning. We also spend time during the course considering the role of the community manager using the CSCCE Skills Wheel, empowering learners to appreciate the wide range of skills they use on a daily basis.
It’s a great course for new community managers especially, but it also serves as a valuable grounding for those who have been supporting collaboration and community building for some time. The frameworks and vocabulary that we discuss are gradually becoming the foundation of a shared language for STEM community managers, and can be built upon and iterated over time as your community engagement strategy becomes more sophisticated and impactful.
CEF is also a prerequisite for anyone interested in joining the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program (some exemptions can be made; contact training@cscce.org).
CEF25F will run on Mondays and Thursdays beginning Thursday, 4 September until Thursday, 23 October.
The key dates are:
- Social hour: Thursday, 4 September at 10am – 11am EDT / 2pm – 3pm UTC
- Monday lessons: 8, 15, 22, 29 September; 6, 13, 20 October at 10am – 11:30am EDT / 2pm – 3:30pm UTC
- Thursday Co-Labs: 11, 18, 25 September; 2, 9, 16 October at 10am – 11:30am EDT / 2pm – 3:30pm UTC
- Graduation: 23 October at 10am – 12pm EDT / 2pm – 4pm UTC
Pricing:
- General rate: $1275 (for non-profits)
- Supporting rate: $1575 (aimed at for profits and those who would like to support the participation of others)
Registration is via Eventbrite, and the deadline to register is 1 August 2025.
Nurturing Online Communities
NOC focuses on the social science research into how people communicate and interact in online communities. It’s perfect for anyone who manages an online community, regardless of platform, and unpacks challenges of low engagement, poor behavior and enforcing codes of conduct, and effectively welcoming and onboarding new members.
We take inspiration from a core text for this training, Building Successful Online Communities by Kraut and Resnick. Over the course of seven weeks, we’ll consider the design claims made in the book, and in collaboration with the other participants in the cohort, you’ll work on applying them to your own scenarios.
This course is one of the elective training options in the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program, and is best suited for individuals who are actively managing an online community (rather than those who would like to take on this role in the future).
NOC25F will run on Tuesdays and Fridays beginning Tuesday, 30 September until Friday, 14 November 2025.
The key dates are:
- Tuesday lessons: 30 September; 7, 14, 21, 28 October; 4,11 November at 12pm – 1:30pm ET / 4/5pm – 5/6:30pm UTC*
- Friday Co-Labs: 3,10,17, 24, 31 October; 7,14 November at 12pm – 1:30pm ET / 4/5pm – 5/6:30pm UTC*
*Note that daylight savings may affect the timing of live sessions for those outside the US in the final week two weeks of the course)
Pricing:
- General rate: $1275 (for non-profits)
- Supporting rate: $1575 (aimed at for profits and those who would like to support the participation of others)
Registration is via Eventbrite, and the deadline to register is 5 September 2025.
Project Management for Scientists
PMB is our newest online training course – we initially created it as a 2-day bootcamp in 2024 for CZI grantees, and subsequently piloted it as a multi-week general registration course earlier this year. Similar to NOC, we take inspiration from a core text for PMB, in this case it’s The Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook by Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez.
Over the course of 6, 2-hour sessions spread across three weeks, we’ll consider project management as a critical human infrastructure role in STEM, and explore the three domains of a “Project Canvas” using STEM-specific case studies.
PMB is also an elective course in the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program, and a more advanced training that does require some background knowledge in project management terms and concepts. If you are brand new to project management, we encourage you to also sign up for our 5 November introductory Mini-workshop, which will provide you with the background you need to successfully complete PMB. You can bundle your Mini-workshop ticket into your registration for PMB in Eventbrite (click the yellow button below!).
PMB25F will run on Tuesdays and Fridays beginning Tuesday, 18 November until Friday, 12 December 2025.
The key dates are:
- Tuesday lessons: 18 November; 2, 9 December at 12pm – 2pm EST / 5pm – 7pm UTC
- Friday Co-Labs: 21 November; 5, 12 December at 12pm – 2pm EST / 5pm – 7pm UTC
*Note: Due to the Thanksgiving Holiday in the U.S., there will be no sessions on Tuesday, 25 November and Friday, 28 November.
Pricing:
- General rate: $750 (for non-profits)
- Supporting rate: $895 (aimed at for profits and those who would like to support the participation of others)
Registration is via Eventbrite, and the deadline to register is 28 October 2025.
A note on CSCCE’s “pilot” courses
You may have noticed that we often refer to “pilot” versions of our courses. As part of our curriculum development process, we always consider the first cohort of any training we deliver a “pilot.” This means that we are still settling on the best way to engage with our learners, the best wording for our Canvas pages, and we often make adjustments based on learner feedback in real time as well as after the pilot course has concluded.
This means that, while we deliver the best course we possibly can to our pilot participants, it is a “v1” and doesn’t represent the “final version” of the course. As a thank you gift for participating in a pilot, we offer these cohorts at a discounted rate. Once a course is out of the pilot phase and has reached “steady state,” we bring the price of the course up and into alignment with our other offerings. You can find out more about what this shift from pilot to steady state involves in this blog post.
Requesting a course discount
You may also have noticed that we offer both general and supporting rates for our courses. The general rate reflects the baseline cost of delivering the training – including preparing course materials within and maintaining our online learning platform, Canvas. The supporting rate is there to encourage registrants who are able to contribute to our accessibility fund. We can then use this fund to offer discounts to individuals for whom the general rate is too high. If you would like to access the fund, you can do so using this brief course discount request form.
If you have any questions about CSCCE’s accessibility fund, including other ways to contribute (e.g., through sponsorship), please contact training@cscce.org.