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October’s community call: Community champions programs

This month, we’re considering the role of community champions (also known as community ambassadors or, sometimes, fellows) in successful community management, and how community champions programs can intentionally work with emergent leaders to meet the needs of a community or organization.

Join us for our monthly community call on Wednesday, 20 October at 3pm UTC / 11am EDT to learn more about champions and some of the programs that already exist – or are being planned – within the STEM ecosystem. [Add to iCal or Google Calendar]

Our October call will focus on the role of community champions and how community managers can support and empower them through intentional programming. Image credit: CSCCE

We’re hiring! Part-time communications assistant: Learn about community-centric communications with us as you start a new career

Are you interested in a career in STEM communications and/or community management? Then read on, because we’d love to hear from you!

We’re looking to hire a temporary, part-time communications assistant to help us as we enhance our member engagement infrastructure. This is a great position for someone who is looking to transition out of academia, or would benefit from flexible working hours. And while this is an entry-level role, we’re definitely open to applicants with more advanced qualifications but who see value in learning new skills in community-centric communications.

Coming up over the next few months – CSCCE Community of Practice programming update

We’re really looking forward to some new programming offerings we’ve put together for the rest of the year! Read on to find out what’s coming up and how to get involved. If you’re not already a member of our community of practice for community builders in STEM, you can request to join our Slack workspace here.

New CSCCE resource explores the role of champions in building and sustaining communities in STEM

Our latest guidebook explores the importance of supporting and encouraging the work of community champions, emergent leaders who take on additional roles within a community to ensure its success. The guidebook builds on our Community Participation Model, which describes how community members engage with community programming and the ways community managers can design activities and events that meet members where they are. It forms part two in a growing series of foundational resources, with more to come later this year.

What is a community champion?

We define a community champion as:

An emergent leadership role within a community in which a community member takes on more responsibility for the success, sustainability, and/or running of the community.

Welcome to Donna Okubo – CSCCE’s new Membership Director

This week, we welcomed Donna Okubo onto the CSCCE staff team. Donna joins us as our Membership Director, and will play a key role as we pilot an institutional membership program next year. We’re delighted she’s decided to share her considerable experience with CSCCE and hope you’ll give her a warm welcome, too.

About Donna

Donna brings more than 14 years of experience in open access and open science to the role of CSCCE membership director. Before joining us, she spent more than a decade working for the Public Library of Science (PLOS), building their 150-member organizational membership program from the ground up. Her talent for seeking out and maintaining partnerships across a diverse range of academic, infrastructure, and industry organizations will be pivotal as CSCCE builds its own institutional membership program (more on that in the coming weeks).

“I’m so excited to join CSCCE at such a dynamic moment in the organization’s development,” she said. “I’ve always loved the start-up spirit, and the CSCCE team is clearly making a vital impact on the way science is done today.”

September’s Community Call – Quarterly Programming Update

We’re excited to share some new programming options for community members coming up over the next few months, as well as other CSCCE behind-the-scenes news, and so we hope you will join us on Wednesday, 22 September 2021 at 4pm UTC / 11am EDT for our quarterly programming update.

Note that this call will not be recorded, in order to facilitate frank discussion.

The September 2021 CSCCE Community Call will give an overview of our upcoming community programming, ways that you can get involved, and a sneak peek behind the scenes. Image credit: CSCCE

July’s community call: Adding to the collection of CSCCE community profiles

Our July community call focused on one of CSCCE’s ongoing research projects: Creating scientific community profiles. We heard from Lou Woodley and Katie Pratt, who led the project, as well as three of the scientific community managers who took part in the project. In this blog post we briefly recap why we’re doing this work, what’s coming in the next few months, and share videos of the three community manager presentations.

If you are interested in creating a profile for your community, please let us know by filling out this short form.

A selection of some of our newest community profiles. Image credit: CSCCE

Announcing a second collection of scientific community profiles! A year in the life of 14 STEM communities

This week we published 14 new community profiles in our growing collection that describes different STEM communities. Each profile is a free-to-download infographic that provides a snapshot of the community’s structure and programming, as well as a look at its outputs, challenges, and plans for the future.

These profiles are part of a research project we began last year, to provide a resource to describe and discuss STEM communities – and inspire community managers, senior managers and funders alike about the possibilities of community-based projects. In addition to 13 profiles created in 2020, we are conducting a meta-analysis to investigate trends observed across the dataset, as well as building out additional resources to complement the collection.

Some of the profiles included in our newest collection. Image credit: CSCCE

July’s Community Call: CSCCE community profiles round two

This month, we’re showcasing a new collection of community profiles on our community call, and have invited four of the community managers who took part in this project to share their experiences. Join us on Wednesday, 21 July 2021 via Zoom, and read on for more details about the call.

Join us to learn more about research into STEM communities. Image credit: the CSCCE.

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.