community engagement fundamentals Archives

Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF26F)

Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals is an eight-week course designed to offer new or existing community managers core frameworks and vocabulary to describe their community’s purpose, refine or create strategic programming to engage community members around their shared goals, and identify ways to lower barriers to member participation. While the content is designed for any level of learner, it should not be thought of as a “beginner” course. Rather, it is intended to create common ground so that scientific community managers can converse across disciplines, more efficiently learn from one another, and build successful engagement strategies that are grounded in theory.

Each week, participants will meet virtually (using Zoom) for a 90 minute lesson and a 90 minute Co-Lab. While lessons will involve structured presentations and activities, Co-Lab time is for discussion, reporting out, and seeking feedback from instructors and fellow learners.

Each week will also include approximately 90 minutes of homework, for a total time commitment of 4.5 hours per week.

Our Fall offering of Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF26F) will run on Mondays and Thursdays beginning Thursday, 22 October until Thursday, 10 December 2026.

The key dates are:

Social hour: Thursday, 22 October at 10am – 11am EDT / 2pm – 3pm UTC
Monday lessons: 26 October; 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 November; 7 December at 10am – 11:30pm ET / 2/3pm – 3/4:30pm UTC*
Thursday Co-Labs: 29 October; 5, 12, 19 November**; 3 December at 10am – 11:30pm ET / 2/3pm – 3/4:30pm UTC*
Graduation: Thursday, 10 December at 10am – 12pm EST / 3pm – 5pm UTC

*Daylight savings time adjustments in late October/early November may impact the precise timing of live sessions in your area.
**We will not hold a Co-Lab on Thursday, 26 November in observance of the US Thanksgiving holiday.

Registration deadline: 1 October 2026

Upcoming CSCCE training courses to enhance your community engagement and content design skills

Registration is now open for two of CSCCE’s multi-week training courses: Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF26W) and Content Design (CODE26Sp).

In this blog post you can find out more about each training (but please reach out to training@cscce.org if you have any questions), including various resources to support your participation.

In service of our ongoing commitment to “shining a light on the less visible,” we’ve also included some information about what it means for us to run live, cohort-based online trainings like these, and why it’s so important that we fill each cohort we offer.

Scientific Community Engagament Fundamentals (CEF26W)

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 winter offering of Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF26W) will run on Mondays and Thursdays beginning Thursday, 19 March until Thursday, 7 May.

The key dates are:

Social hour: Thursday, 19 March at 12pm – 1pm EDT / 4pm – 5pm UTC
Monday lessons: 23, 30 March; 6,13, 20, 27 April; 4 May at 12pm – 1:30pm EDT / 4pm – 5:30pm UTC
Thursday Co-Labs: 26 March; 2, 9,16, 23, 30 April at 12pm – 1:30pm EDT / 4pm – 5:30pm UTC
Graduation: Thursday, 7 May at 12pm – 2pm EDT / 4pm – 6pm UTC

Registration deadline: Thursday, 5 March 2026

More information is available on the CEF webpage.

Training update: Three CSCCE multi-week courses coming up later this year!

Registration is now open for our “Fall” cohorts of Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF), Nurturing Online Communities (NOC), and Project Management for Scientists (PMB)!

These trainings will round out our offerings for 2025. This blog post will give you a sense of who each training is designed for and how they connect to the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program. We’ve also created a new infographic detailing the impact of CEF on our 350+ CEF graduates and the communities they serve. If you’re considering the course, but need documentation to back up your professional development funding request, hopefully this will help!

If you have any questions, please let us know by emailing training@cscce.org.

Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF)

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.

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.

Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF25W)

Our Winter offering of Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF24F) will run on Tuesdays and Fridays beginning Friday, 17 January until Friday, 7 March 2025.

The key dates are:

Social hour: Friday, 17 January at 10am – 11am EST / 3pm – 4pm UTC
Tuesday lessons: 21, 28 January; 4,11,18, 25 February; 4 March at 10am – 11:30pm EST / 3pm – 4:30pm UTC
Friday Co-Labs: 24, 31 January; 7,14, 21,28 February at 10am – 11:30am EST / 3pm – 4:30pm UTC
Graduation: Friday, 7 March at 9:30am – 11:30am EST / 2:30pm – 4:30pm UTC

Registration is now closed.

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.

How does CSCCE online training impact community managers and their organizations? Read our report to find out!

Thanks to funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, we recently completed a medium-term evaluation of our foundational training course, Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF). We’ve just published a report that summarizes the results of this work, which shows impact across three levels of scale – the individual, their community/organization, and the wider STEM ecosystem.

In this blog post, we’ll recap some of the rationale for the report and a high level overview of our findings. Subsequent posts will share more about our user-centered design approach to creating professional training courses, what we learned about the impact of CEF at each level, and how this work will impact our ongoing training offerings.

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT

Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF24F)

Our fall offering of Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF24F) will run on Mondays and Thursdays beginning Thursday, 12 September until Thursday, 31 October.

The key dates are:

Social hour: Thursday, 12 September at 12pm – 1pm EST / 4pm – 5pm UTC
Monday lessons: 16, 23, 30 September; 7, 14, 21, 28 October at 12pm – 1:30pm EST / 4pm – 5:30pm UTC
Thursday Co-Labs: 19, 26 September; 3, 10, 17, 24 October at 12pm – 1:30pm EST / 4pm – 5:30pm UTC
Graduation: Thursday, 31 October at 12pm – 2pm EST / 4pm – 6pm UTC

Registration is now closed.

More information is available on the CEF webpage.

More than 300 learners have graduated from Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals!

This month we celebrated a very exciting milestone – more than 300 STEM community managers (305, to be exact!) have now successfully completed our foundational training in community management, Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF).

Congratulations to all of our graduates – many of whom are featured on this page of our website – and if you’re interested in taking part in the course yourself, registration is open for our fall 2024 cohort (registration deadline: 23 August). But hurry! It’s more than half full already.

“The course provides essential information to support community work whether you are just beginning or seeking to expand your community engagement activities. It provides resources to help you develop a strategy and tools to support implementation of your ideas. This course demystifies many aspects of community engagement and helps to ensure your community is built to last.”
CEF24W participant

April’s Community Call: Evaluating the impact of short-form training in the STEM ecosystem

On our April Community Call, we’ll be focusing on how to evaluate the impact of professional development trainings on individual participants, their organizations, and the STEM ecosystem as a whole.

Evaluation is something that we’ve been doing more and more at CSCCE in our client work – capturing the value created in various community programs and proposing improvements for future interactions. We’re especially interested in programs that support group-based learning in some way such as those that provide training and/or mentorship for community champions.

Over the last few months, thanks to funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, we’ve been turning the spotlight back on one of our own learning activities, by researching the impact of our foundational training course in community management, Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF). At the same time, Open Life Science (OLS) have been conducting an evaluation of their Open Seeds cohort-based training and mentorship program. These evaluations have taken place on the backdrop of an ongoing conversation about how to measure the impact of short-form trainings in the life sciences in general, thanks to the work of Jason Williams and Rochelle Trachtenberg.