Blog

We’re hiring! Are you CSCCE’s new Membership Director?

Thanks to a new grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, we’re now looking to hire our first Membership Director!

This is a key role at a pivotal point in CSCCE’s evolution as we work to transition from an organization that’s significantly subsidized by philanthropy to one that is more financially self-sufficient. Part of charting that path to financial sustainability includes developing an institutional membership program to support different groups and organizations who are convening communities and looking to access best-in-class training, support, and consultancy services.

Announcing a new grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support CSCCE’s transition to financial sustainability

We’re delighted to announce that CSCCE has received a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support us as we chart a path to financial sustainability. This blog post offers an overview of our plans, with more details about specific projects to come in future posts.

Registration now open for the last offering of Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals this year (CEF21F)

General registration opens TODAY for Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF21F). This 7-week online course, intended for new and more seasoned community managers alike, grounds learners in CSCCE’s core frameworks, offering a strong foundation for strategic community building in STEM.

This is the last time in 2021 that we’ll be running CEF, and it’s also your last chance to take this consistently oversubscribed offering at its current price point. So hurry and book your place today!

Summer 2021: Opportunities to deepen your connections within the CSCCE community of practice

This summer, we are focusing our community programming on building a denser network of connections within the CSCCE community of practice. This means not only creating opportunities for new connections to form, but also to strengthen the relationships that already exist. In this blog post, we highlight the events and activities we’re hosting to meet these goals, and we hope that you’ll mark your calendars to join in. If you’re not already a member of the community, you can request an invitation to our Slack workspace.

New guidebook completes CSCCE’s core resource on using virtual events to facilitate community building in STEM

The COVID-19 pandemic has underlined the importance of intentionality and good planning in making the most of virtual gatherings. Whether engaging in ideation sessions, report outs, networking, project planning or seminars, we’ve seen how careful choices ahead of the event and thoughtful facilitation during and afterwards can lead to more enjoyable and inclusive experiences for everyone in the virtual room.

To support this transition online, over the course of the last year CSCCE has published a series of resources to help community managers and event organizers – including tip sheets, guidebooks and write-ups of different tools. Today we’re pleased to share a new guidebook and a new series of mini-workshops to continue that support.

DOWNLOAD GUIDEBOOK

New CSCCE mini-workshop series on virtual events launches 20 July 2021

Starting this July, we’re piloting a new 90-minute mini-workshop format as part of our expanding professional development curriculum to support community managers in STEM. Our first series will focus on planning and facilitating virtual events, with five standalone mini-workshops for you to choose from. Take one or take them all!

In this blog post, we answer any questions you might have about the virtual events series, but if we’ve missed something, please email us at: info@cscce.org.

Data Science SIG Call Recap: Exploring data ethics in our communities

Members of CSCCE’s Data Science Special Interest Group (SIG) met on 18 May 2021 to have a conversation centered around efforts to promote and facilitate data ethics in our communities. In this guest blog post, SIG co-chair Alycia Crall shares a short summary of the discussion.

If you are a member of the CSCCE community of practice (or request to join) who works with data science or related communities, you are welcome to join the #data_science_SIG channel in our Slack workspace.

Creating collaboration guides: New CSCCE resource to help research collaborations succeed

On 26 May 2021, CSCCE Director Lou Woodley took part in the Zuckerman Institute’s Neuroscience Symposium, joining a session on team science and collaborative research. As part of the session she facilitated a workshop for attendees to explore how and why collaboration guides are so important, and shared a brand new CSCCE tip sheet on creating them. Read on to find out more.

May’s community call recap – Personalized networking

For our May community call we piloted a curated networking forum with the intention of helping our members connect and find others with similar interests or overlapping community characteristics. More than 40 community members attended the event which was a resounding success. Thanks to everyone for playing along and being adaptable as we worked together to enjoy a joyful, energetic 90 minutes!

In this blog post, we share our rationale for hosting a community networking event, as well as a high-level overview of our forum structure. If you weren’t able to attend this call, but like the sound of spending 60-90 minutes getting to know your community better, we will be offering another opportunity to network before the end of 2021.