Mini-workshop | Enacting culture change: The Four Frame Model
2025-07-02 11:00 - 12:30 (America/New_York)
Many culture change projects are met with general enthusiasm at the conceptual level, but fall short during their implementation. In this Mini-workshop, participants will reflect on their own role as change agents and use Bolman and Deal’s Four-Frame Model to assess and describe different types of barriers to culture change initiatives (structural, human resources, political, and symbolic). We will then use the model to identify where community managers might exert leverage – and what specific actions could help to overcome the identified barriers.
Price: $175
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cscce-mini-workshop-enacting-culture-change-the-four-frame-model-tickets-1286599978169?aff=oddtdtcreator
Registration deadline: Wednesday, 25 June 2025

Mini-workshop | Designing for effective decision-making during virtual meetings
2025-07-16 11:00 - 13:00
Meetings and virtual events often involve asking attendees to make decisions. Decision-making invokes numerous considerations, including how to negotiate power dynamics, empower everyone to express their opinions, and actually reach the outcome(s) you desire. In this Mini-workshop, you will explore four broad decision-making modes (authority rule, consultation, voting, and consensus) and then use the PACT framework to plan a decision-making process. You will leave prepared to deploy decision-making processes in a way that invites all attendees at your meetings and events to contribute.
Price: $150
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cscce-mw-designing-for-effective-decision-making-during-virtual-meetings-tickets-1203811977029?aff=oddtdtcreator
Registration deadline: Wednesday, 9 July 2025

Mini-workshop | Creating core values statements
2025-08-06 11:00 - 13:00
Core values statements describe the values underpinning how community members would like to interact, and include a definition of each value as well as examples of what they look like in action. Core values statements are most effective when they are co-created with community members and are specific to the community, rather than re-using values statements that others have created. In this Mini-workshop, you will practice a process for developing core values that you can adapt for your own community.
Price: $175
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cscce-mini-workshop-creating-core-values-statements-tickets-1286633618789?aff=oddtdtcreator
Registration deadline: Wednesday, 30 July 2025

CSCCE QSS Session | Guiding your community members towards a shared purpose
2025-09-03 11:00 - 12:30
Over the lifetime of a community, there are often transitional moments when, as community manager, you might need to re-assess or re-align members around your community’s shared purpose. In this Quarterly Skills Share session, we’ll discuss ways of synthesizing feedback into meaningful content and programming, facilitating generative conversations through scaffolded activities, and co-creating new materials with and for your members. This session will draw on themes from the Content Design (CODE) course, as well as the Creating core values Mini-workshop, which we will summarize at the beginning of the session.
Speakers:

Brielle Bennett, Senior Program Specialist, Ethics and Organizational Advancement, American Geophysical Union
Curtis Sharma, Project Manager/Community Manager, 4TU.ResearchData
Zoë Leanza, Communications Manager, Sage Bionetworks

About Quarterly Skills Share sessions
Quarterly Skills Share (QSS) sessions are an opportunity for participants in the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program to share insights and expertise about their roles as STEM community managers. Sessions last 90-minutes and include two or three presentations, with ample time for Q&A and discussion.
This is an invitation-only event.

Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF)
2025-09-04 - 2025-10-23
This eight-week course is designed to offer new and existing community managers a core set of actionable skills and strategies. Participants meet twice a week, with lecture-style content interspersed with discussion and project work.
Our fall offering of Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (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*, 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

*CSCCE will be closed on Monday, 13 October 2025 in observance of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. To accommodate this, we have slightly adjusted the schedule for this CEF cohort. “Reading Week” will now only take place during one session, on 2 October 2025, and the Week 7 lesson that would have taken place on Monday, 13 October will be held on Thursday, 9 October.
REGISTER (deadline: 1 August 2025)
Pricing:
CSCCE offers rates to reflect the different organizations that community managers work for and the range of budgets that may be available.

General rate: $1275 – For non-profits.
Supporting rate: $1575 – Aimed at for-profits and others who would like to support the participation of others.
Discounted rate: Depending on participants paying the supporting rate, we may be able offer a limited number of discounted tickets for this cohort. If you would like to participate but your organization is unable to cover the whole cost, please complete this course discount request form.

Find out more about CSCCE’s refund policy.
More information is available on the CEF webpage.

Mini-workshop | Working with volunteers
2025-09-29 11:00 - 13:00
Community managers are often trying to create spaces that support group learning and self-expression to build something members of the community couldn’t create alone – and this almost always includes incorporating volunteer contributions. In this Mini-workshop, we’ll explore common community manager concerns related to working with volunteers. We’ll discuss how to flip the narrative from self-doubt and scarcity to center volunteers in a way that empowers and supports them in working together and builds your confidence as a community organizer. We will discuss making contributor pathways visible so that work gets done, while being respectful of members’ different contexts. If you’ve ever found yourself thinking things such as “I feel really self-conscious about asking for contributions from our volunteers – are we being too demanding?” and “I know that different members in our community need different things, but I don’t know where to start.” then this discussion-based workshop is for you.
Price: $175
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cscce-mini-workshop-working-with-volunteers-tickets-1286675584309?aff=oddtdtcreator
Registration deadline: Wednesday, 24 September 2025

Nurturing Online Communities (NOC)
2025-09-30 - 2025-11-14
Building and nurturing a community in an online environment comes with specific needs and challenges. This seven-week course is designed with community managers of scientific communities of practice in mind, and will explore a variety of social science claims about how people behave in online communities to inform actions that you might take to support increased engagement, commitment, and constructive behavior.
In this seminar-style course, participants will engage with instructors and each other in regular discussions, guided by the course textbook, Building Successful Online Communities by Kraut and Resnick. The course will cover 6 topics related to managing online communities and each week we will review the corresponding chapter of the textbook, focusing on key themes identified by staff, and work together on a case study to apply the concepts. Later the same week, learners will spend a 90-minute Co-Lab working in breakouts on a CSCCE-designed activity to apply a translation of the core concepts to their own community, followed by a debrief.
Our fall offering of Nurturing Online Communities (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, 12** 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).
**CSCCE will be closed on Tuesday, 11 November 2025 in observance of Veterans Day. To accommodate this, our week 7 lesson will take place in the same time slot on Wednesday, 12 November.
Registration deadline: Friday, 5 September, 2025
REGISTER FOR NOC25F

Mini-workshop | An introduction to project management for scientists
2025-11-05 11:00 - 13:00
This two hour session provides an overview of the concepts and approaches scientists can use in managing their collaborative projects. You will leave the session able to describe what a project is and the relationship between projects and operations. We’ll also discuss the three types of project and their relationship to uncertainty and complexity. Finally, we will explore the competencies of an effective project leader, whatever their job title. Please note that we also offer a two-day Project Management for Scientists Bootcamp that significantly expands on the topics covered in this Mini-workshop, and sets you up to put many of these principles into practice using HBR’s Project Canvas.
Price: $175
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cscce-mini-workshop-an-introduction-to-project-management-for-scientists-tickets-1286709465649?aff=oddtdtcreator
Registration deadline: Wednesday, 29 October 2025

Project Management for Scientists Bootcamp (PMB)
2025-11-18 - 2025-12-12
This six-session bootcamp intensive offers a grounding in the basics of project management, tailored to apply to specific STEM contexts. This training draws upon a core text, The Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook by Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, with materials contextualized for STEM scenarios and applied to custom STEM case studies by CSCCE staff.
Over the course of this training, participants use CSCCE-created templates to create a Project Canvas describing the three key domains of a project (Foundation, People, and Creation) and the three building blocks of each domain (which include the project’s purpose, benefits, stakeholders, sponsor, and the plan for delivery and evaluation).
We use detailed STEM-specific case studies to support participants with completing the Project Canvas in small groups, with application sessions intended to aid participants in applying the concepts to their own project. In our experience, this provides the most value – supporting high fidelity acquisition of key concepts as well as dedicated time to make progress on individual projects with instructor support.
The Fall 2025 offering of the Project Management for Scientists Bootcamp (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.
Registration deadline: Tuesday, 28 October 2025
REGISTER FOR PMB25F

CSCCE QSS Session | Project managing timelines and workflows across your team and/or community
2025-12-03 11:00 - 12:30
Quarterly Skills Share (QSS) sessions are an opportunity for participants in the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program to share insights and expertise about their roles as STEM community managers. Sessions last 90-minutes and include two or three presentations, with ample time for Q&A and discussion. This quarter, our speakers will be talking about the temporal aspects of community management: Project managing timelines and workflows across your team and/or community.
The successful, on-time delivery of community projects and activities regularly requires community managers to use project management tools and strategies to coordinate work. In this Quarterly Skills Share session, we’ll discuss tools and tactics for managing projects both within a staff team and across a community of volunteers, with a particular emphasis on time-dependent, deadline-driven workflows. This session will draw on themes from all of the multi-week courses in CSCCE’s Community Manager Certification Program, connecting the dots between effective content and communication, engagement strategy, project management, and documentation.
Speakers

Pooneh Sabouri, Project Manager for STEP UP, Florida International University
Jody Peters, Community Manager for the Ecological Forecasting Initiative, University of Notre Dame
Saranjeet Kaur Bhogal, Research Software Engineer, Imperial College London

This is an invitation-only event.
