Next week, at our Q3 Quarterly Skills Share session (a regular part of the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program), we’ll be celebrating two more certification program graduates!
Lena Karvovskaya, Community Coordinator for the Dutch Thematic Digital Competence Centre for the Natural and Engineering Sciences (TDCC-NES) at TU Delft Library, and Zachary Baker, Community Manager for the Open Molecular Software Foundation, are now CSCCE-certified community managers: Congratulations, Lena and Zach!!
In this blog post we share a few of Zach and Lena’s reflections on the program and highlight their individual training journeys. And, for those less familiar with the program, we’ve also included a brief summary of what it involves.
As a reminder, we now accept open enrollment in the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program, which means you can join the program at any time. So if you’re interested in signing up, do send an email to training@cscce.org!
A brief overview of the program
CSCCE’s Community Manager Certification Program builds upon our foundational Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF) course to create a longer-form, multi-component, online program for STEM community managers. Participants are required to complete three multi-week courses (Content Design, Creating Community Playbooks, and an elective course of their choice), six Mini-workshops (Creating core values statements, Giving and receiving feedback, and four more of their choice), and attend three Quarterly Skills Share sessions (presenting a lightning talk at one of them).
The curriculum is intended to ensure all participants receive training in core concepts underpinning successful collaboration and community building. With this strong foundation, they can then choose their specialities via their elective course and Mini-workshops. Also, because of the program’s modular nature, it allows for new trainings to be added as we develop them. For example, we added Project Management for Scientists as an elective course this year.
A learning community that inspires confidence
Earlier this month, we sat down with Zach and Lena to talk about their experiences in the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program. They both reflected on how being part of the program meant that they were consistently empowered by being part of a community of professionals in similar careers. In other words – participating in CSCCE trainings both inspired them to try new things, and gave them confidence in the programming they were already offering their members.
We also talked about the vocabulary they’ve found helpful to acquire over the years, and how it’s become second nature to talk in the shared language of CSCCE community engagement frameworks (e.g., discussing content and programming through the lens of the Community Participation Model) – opening the possibility of comparing projects with peers and talking more strategically about community management approaches. From the inception of our very first training, Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals, it has been one of CSCCE’s goals to give STEM community managers a shared vocabulary, so we were delighted to hear this so clearly articulated as an outcome from the Certification Program.
As Lena and Zach graduate, they’re both thinking long-term about the next steps for their communities – including continuing to embed the practices they’ve established during the program to support the ongoing evolution of their own communities. We can’t wait for updates about what they do next, and look forward to ongoing sharing in the CSCCE community of practice (to which you can request an invitation, if you’re not already a member!).
Lena’s journey through the program
Lena is a longtime learner with CSCCE. She participated in one of our earliest cohorts of Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF; a prerequisite for participating in the Certification Program) as well as our pilot offerings of Nurturing Online Communities (NOC; next cohort starts at the end of September), Content Design (CODE), and Creating Community Playbooks (PBK). Her QSS lightning talk was a valuable peek behind the curtain of what it takes to develop and maintain community-engaged documentation, and a fabulous example of the care Lena brings to her work as a scientific community manager.
About her time in the program, Lena said:
“I really appreciate how transparent you are about community engagement within the CSCCE community…Hard to imagine how [the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program] could be better.”
Congratulations, Lena!
Zach’s journey through the program
Zach joined the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program as part of our second cohort – soon after completing CEF in the Spring of 2024. After completing his required PBK and CODE courses, he chose to take our newest training, Project Management for Scientists (PMB; next cohort starts in November). Zach’s QSS presentation also focused on documentation, including some incredibly useful spreadsheet templates for tracking contributions to community infrastructure, which he generously shared with everyone else in the program.
About his time in the program, Zach said:
“With CSCCE, I am able to have a reference for best practices as I am doing the work. It’s as if you are bowling with bumpers – the pitfalls of community management are mitigated with the CSCCE team in the room. While developing my own strategy for my unique community, I can look over the shoulder at CSCCE’s community and the community of my peers and really know for sure that I am going down the right path.”
Congratulations, Zach!
Celebrating our CSCCE-certified community managers!
We celebrate graduates from the program in multiple ways! Everyone who successfully completes the program:
- Receives a digital badge recognizing their achievement
- Receives a digital certificate that they can print and display
- Receives an enamel pin and personalized postcard in the mail
- Is featured on a new page on the CSCCE website
- Is featured at the next Quarterly Skills Share session (for Lena and Zach, that will be taking place on Wednesday, 3 September 2025)
If you’d like to start your journey towards certification, you can find more information on this page of the website, as well as answers to some FAQs and a detailed breakdown of our prepaid and pay-as-you-go participation options. To enroll, please email training@cscce.org!