CSCCE offers a range of training options to support scientific community professionals. From individual multi-week online courses and mini-workshops to our forthcoming 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.

Table of Contents
- Our training philosophy
- Our instructors
- Multi-week online courses
- Mini-workshops
- CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program
- Your learning journey with CSCCE
- Organizational partnerships and custom trainings
- Our learning technologies
- FAQs
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.
- 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.
- 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 20 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.
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.
Mini-workshops
CSCCE webinars 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 90-minute mini-workshop 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.
We are currently planning our mini-workshop offerings for 2023. More information will be posted here.
CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program
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.
The first cohort will begin their certification programming in 2023.
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
From 2023, we will be supplementing our use of Zoom, Google Workspace tools, and various additional apps with a learning management system called Canvas. Canvas will support learners with accessing and managing course materials as well as submitting homework. Instructions and an optional orientation to Canvas will be 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.
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.