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CSCCE’s 2025, by the numbers
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1 new program – Birdaro
Our big launch this year was the Birdaro training program. Funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), we established Birdaro as a hub for scientific open-source projects to connect and up-skill in leadership, collaboration, and sustainability. We announced the program in July, and in September we welcomed 60 individuals from 24 projects into a 12-week program that combined Mini-workshops focused on governance and interpersonal dynamics; Lightning Talk sessions at which each project shared on topics related to scaling and sustaining collaborative projects; and a multi-week training adapting our Creating Community Playbooks course to open-source contexts.
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2 new general registration courses
This year we delivered our first flipped classroom training, re-vamping our Nurturing Online Communities (NOC) course, which initially piloted in 2021. We also made our Project Management for Scientists Bootcamp (PMB) available as a general registration course for the first time this year, having piloted it as a private training for CZI at the end of 2024. And it was so popular that we ran two general registration cohorts AND a private offering in 2025!
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6 keynotes and panels
Throughout 2025, we’ve shared CSCCE’s work at various conferences and gatherings that brought together thought leaders in open-source software, AI, next generation computing, and research development. This included our Director, Lou Woodley, giving a keynote at the NORDP conference, a deep-dive session on community engagement for the academic OSPO community, CURIOSS, as well as facilitating a panel at the Science of Team Science conference featuring several of our certification program graduates.
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8 new and returning clients
Our consultancy work this year included expanding the reach of our materials to executive directors, project managers, growing teams, and community-engaged organizations. We worked with international STEM infrastructure organizations, US-based academic teams, and domain-specific nonprofits. Our consultancy included delivering private trainings, evaluating programs and activities, offering ongoing community engagement strategy support, and developing new training curricula.
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250+ trainees
In 2025, 250 general registration learners joined us for our multi-week courses and Mini-workshops. Even more participated in CSCCE-run trainings through private offerings for our clients and by participating in the Birdaro training program. Our “back-of the envelope” calculations suggest that we trained upwards of 350 individuals this year alone, and deepened our relationship with a number of people who returned to build upon the trainings they took with us in years past.
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1000 members of our CoP
As a testament to our broadening impact within the STEM ecosystem, our Slack-based community of practice welcomed more than 200 new members this year, and our 1000th member joined in late September. The workspace continues to host conversations about community management in STEM, a community-sourced jobs board, various special interest groups, and a channel devoted to regular one-on-one coffee chats powered by the Donut app. If you’d like to join, you can request an invitation at any time!
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Coming up in the new year
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New events and trainings will be added to our Events calendar in January/February 2026.
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CSCCE Tools Trials return in 2026 – starting with Zulip!
CSCCE Tools Trials are synchronous opportunities for STEM community managers to test out a new platform and/or explore how that platform can be used to support community engagement (e.g., our GitHub series). Our first Tools Trial of 2026 will focus on Zulip, an open-source community platform, similar to Slack, that supports threaded discussions that can be organized by topic and channel.
Read more
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Please note that CSCCE is closing for the holidays from 22 December 2025 – 2 January 2026, and will have limited operations through 19 January 2026.
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