Trainings

CSCCE offers a range of training options to support scientific community professionals. From individual multi-week online courses and mini-workshops to our new Community Manager Certification Program, we are confident we can support your professional development journey. To stay up to date on CSCCE training offerings, please check back regularly or join our mailing list.

Image credit: CSCCE

Open enrollment

Enrollment is currently open for:

Mini-workshops

Standalone, 90-120 minute events. Registration is currently open for:

Multi-week courses

3-8 week online, cohort-based trainings:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Our training philosophy

Learning and sharing together is one of CSCCE’s core values and we believe that in an emerging, dynamic profession such as scientific community engagement there are two complementary learning needs.

  1. The first is the creation of a shared vocabulary and set of frameworks to guide the way we talk about the work that we do – materials that we develop at CSCCE. 
  2. The second is the need for trusted learning spaces where we can discuss our own challenges and successes and learn from one another’s experiences. 

Learning together in cohorts is at the core of how we run our longer-form trainings, which is why we usually limit participation in multi-week courses to 25 participants.

Our instructors

We are a team of skilled communicators and facilitators, with extensive experience in academic publishing, international research collaborations, and research centers. We’re systems thinkers, passionate about building community, with an emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

View our team bios

Mini-workshops

CSCCE Mini-workshops are an opportunity to dive deeper into some of our core frameworks and models. They are a great way to get a taste of our more in-depth online training modules, or acquire a broad understanding of the importance of STEM communities and the role of the community manager in STEM.

Each of these Mini-workshops – which last between 90 minutes and two hours –  includes presentations and interactive activities designed to inspire and empower you to reassess your own work through a community-centric lens. You will come away from each mini-workshop with actionable insights and new language and frameworks to discuss collaborative work and community-building roles.

There are three ways you can access CSCCE Mini-workshops:

Find out more about CSCCE Mini-workshops.

Multi-week online courses

Our online trainings are tailor-made for scientific community managers and other facilitators, contextualizing and synthesizing decades of research spanning organizational theory to marketing – all while honoring the wisdom that comes from practice and the value of peer support. 

What you can expect from a CSCCE online course:

  • Synthesis of theory and easy-to-use frameworks to empower you to discuss your work and make strategic decisions with confidence.
  • Contextualized examples to help you to apply key concepts to common scenarios.
  • Worksheets, activities and discussions to support you in leaving with a plan to implement what you’ve learned in your own community.
  • Connection to other community managers in STEM – and multiple opportunities to learn from their experiences and share your own.

The precise format of each multi-week course varies with the course content. Check out the course pages for our current courses for more details, and when each course will be offered next.

The digital badge for Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals.

Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF) 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.

The digital badge for Content Design.

Content Design (CODE) focuses on creating written content for your community that is informative, engaging, and aligned with an overall purpose. It introduces a strategic way of creating content to support your community – something that we believe we are the only organization to provide training about.

The digital badge image for Creating Community Playbooks (PBK) is a mint green circle with a white center. “PLAYBOOKS” spelled out in white, over the top of the mint green circle, and a mint green umbel design is overlaid in the white center. At the bottom right, on the outside of the circle, it says “CSCCE Training Course” in two shades of teal.

In Creating Community Playbooks, we’ll talk about the different contexts in which playbooks (written hubs that keep your community members, community champions or community team on the same page) are useful and the different strategies for creating and maintaining them. Then, you’ll use CSCCE’s playbook framework and custom templates to create a “lite” playbook of your own.

Next offering coming 2025

The digital badge for Communities of Practice.

Communities of Practice is a theory-driven exploration of how to nurture communities of practice in STEM. We’ll cover describing your community’s purpose and identifying who you need in your community for it to succeed, and what a “practice” can look like in terms of programming and other support.

Pilot offering coming 2025

The digital badge for Nurturing Online Communities.

Building and nurturing a community in an online environment comes with specific needs and challenges. Nurturing Online Communities is designed with community managers of scientific communities of practice in mind, and will explore a variety of social science claims about how to support increased engagement, commitment and constructive behavior in online communities. 

REGISTER FOR NOC25F
The digital badge image for Project Management for Scientists (PMB) is a blue circle with a white center. PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR SCIENTISTS is spelled out in white, over the top of the blue circle, and a blue umbel design is overlaid in the white center. At the bottom right, on the outside of the circle, it says “CSCCE Training Course” in two shades of teal.

This six-session bootcamp intensive offers a grounding in the basics of project management, tailored to apply to specific STEM contexts and with a strong emphasis on the interpersonal considerations that support successful collaborative work. 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.

CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program

The CSCCE Certified Community Manager digital rosette. It is made up of a dark blue circle with an umbel flower motif in the center, and a lighter blue ribbon descending from the bottom of the circle. The words “CERTIFIED COMMUNITY MANAGER” are spelled out in white on the dark blue circle, and “CSCCE” appears on the lighter blue ribbon.

CSCCE’s Community Manager Certification Program builds upon our foundational Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF) course to create a longer-form, multi-component, online program for STEM community managers. The program will equip community managers and their organizations with necessary skills and frameworks to ground their work in a community-centric leadership approach – and to signal those qualifications to others. 

Contact training@cscce.org for more information.

Your learning journey with CSCCE

Our goal is to provide ongoing professional development opportunities for professionals in the STEM ecosystem who are working to build and nurture communities. We are currently working to expand our offerings so that you can self-select the pace and configuration of  a learning journey that meets your needs. 

The prerequisite for enrollment in all new CSCCE multi-week courses will be graduation from Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF) – or an approved exemption. CEF provides community managers of all levels critical language and frameworks for understanding what is a unique emerging leadership role. Participants develop confidence and increased clarity about their role, and build relationships with other scientific community managers. 

Completion of CEF is not required to participate in CSCCE mini-workshops. 

Organizational partnerships and custom trainings

For organizations where multiple staff members or grantees would benefit from community management training, we can create private, custom cohorts of our existing courses or workshops. We have also created new trainings for a specific need. Please visit our consultancy page to learn more about this option, or email training@cscce.org. 

Our learning technologies

As of 2023, we now supplement our use of Zoom, Google Workspace tools, and various additional apps with the learning management system Canvas. Canvas supports learners with accessing and managing course materials as well as submitting homework. Instructions and a video tour of Canvas is provided as part of the onboarding process to all of our online courses.

FAQs

My job title isn’t community manager – is CSCCE training for me?

If you are working with scientific communities or research collaborations in an academic, industry, or professional association setting, then yes. Additionally, program officers or funders who oversee community-centric initiatives, or professionals involved in running mentoring or alumni networks, might be particularly interested in some of our webinars. 

If you are uncertain if a particular session or series is right for you, please contact us by emailing training@cscce.org. 

How do I know if taking this training will have an impact on my work? 

In 2024, we published a medium-term assessment of our longest-running course, Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF), in which we surveyed almost 300 CEF alumni to share how they are using course materials months or years after graduating. The results of this study demonstrated a positive impact at three levels: that of the individual, their organization or community, and the broader STEM ecosystem. You can find more information about the study on this page of our website.

Do you offer financial support? 

Yes. We are currently building an Accessibility Fund to support learners for whom course and webinar fees are a barrier to participation. Please contact training@cscce.org for more information about how to apply. 

Do the mini-workshops duplicate materials from CSCCE courses?

No. Our mini-workshops either go deeper on concepts and frameworks mentioned in our courses, or they cover entirely new topics. We use similar pedagogical techniques, however, so by taking a CSCCE mini-workshop you will get a taste of what it feels like to take a longer course.

Do you offer refunds?

Refund policy

  • All tickets are sold on a non-refundable basis – this applies whether paying via Eventbrite or by invoice.
  • If you realize within 30 days of the course start date that you are no longer able to attend a course that you have registered for, you may contact training@cscce.org to discuss any available options.
  • At our discretion, we may be able to transfer your registration to the next cohort of the course for which you registered. This depends upon our ability to offer your original place to another learner.