Tag: CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program

Updates to the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program including a “pay-as-you-go” option!

The CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program launched around 18 months ago with the goal of being THE in-depth, professional development program for STEM community managers.

Since launch,  we’ve welcomed almost 30 STEM community managers into the program, delivered 2 go-arounds of our CODE and PBK courses, 15 Mini-workshops, and 4 Quarterly Skills Share sessions.  In that time, we’ve also sought regular feedback to understand any modifications we might make to best support our learners. Today we’re sharing some of the updates we’ve made which together provide a more flexible way to enroll, onboard, and pay for the program!  

If you have any questions about anything in this post, please reach out to training@cscce.org, or join us on Wednesday, 26 March at 12pm EDT / 4pm UTC for our monthly community call. We’ll be sharing a brief overview the program, demo-ing CSCCE’s trainings in Canvas, and holding space for questions about the program. 

Continue reading “Updates to the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program including a “pay-as-you-go” option!”

Nurturing Online Communities (NOC)

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

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: $150

Register here: SOLD OUT – Second session added on 20 March 2025

CSCCE QSS Session | Co-creating community outputs and activities with your members

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.

In this session, we’ll discuss ways of involving your community members in co-creating resources, documentation, projects, and scaffolding. We’ll consider how to maintain living documents (including managing information overload and obsolescence), how to curate and edit content contributed by multiple different authors, and how to engage members of a community in collaborative problem-solving. Our presenters will each share case studies of how they have coordinated community co-creation, including the pitfalls they’ve encountered along the way.

This is an invitation-only event.

Find out more about the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program.

CSCCE QSS Session | Facilitating stakeholder meetings

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 focusing on facilitating stakeholder meetings. As a community manager, you may frequently find yourself convening meetings vital to engaging key stakeholders around the mission and goals of your community. This might include scientific steering committee meetings, governance meetings, strategy meetings, or other specialized gatherings. In this Quarterly Skills Share session, we will consider how to facilitate these meetings so that they are effective and engaging, with speakers sharing examples from their own work. 

This is an invitation-only event.

Find out more about the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program.

Mini-Workshop | Selecting supplementary tools for virtual meetings and events

Community managers regularly use online tools to support the needs of community members in virtual meetings and events. With so many possible needs to solve for, and so many potential online tools to use – how can you quickly determine which tools to explore and then use? In this Mini-workshop, you will apply CSCCE’s BASICS framework and SCORE method to determine an appropriate tool for a provided use case scenario. You will also test two online tools in a “sandbox” setting to explore functionality and usability, preparing you to select and implement tools for your own virtual meetings and events.

 

Price: $150

Register: 6 November Mini-Workshop: OnlineTools24

Registration deadline: Wednesday, 30 October 2024

Mini-Workshop | Designing for effective decision-making during virtual meetings

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: 9 October Mini-Workshop: Decisions24

Registration deadline: Wednesday, 2 October 2024

Mini-workshop | Working with volunteers

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.

 

Registration is now closed. 

Mini-workshop | Making a PACT for engaging virtual meetings and events

With virtual work increasingly the norm, community managers are often tasked with convening and facilitating virtual meetings. In this Mini-workshop, you will discuss the opportunities and challenges of virtual meetings and explore the “Making a PACT” framework (Purpose, Attendees, Community management, Tech tools) for effective meeting design. You will apply the framework directly to example scenarios so that you leave feeling empowered to use the framework in your own community management.

 

Price: $150

Register here: 7 August Mini-Workshop: PACT24

Registration deadline: Wednesday, 31 July 2024

CSCCE QSS Session | Coordinating connections: how do we tactically strengthen relationships and strategic partnerships?

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 tactics for strengthening relationships with community members and strategic partnerships with stakeholders. They will share which tactics have worked for them and those that did not work so well, along with lessons learned. Participants will have the opportunity to share their own tactics, and we will explore new ideas together on how to coordinate connections within and across communities.

This is an invitation-only event.

Find out more about the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program.