A big thank you to everyone who joined us at our first community call of 2025. We appreciated the opportunity to share a “big picture” view of how CSCCE’s training, consultancy, and community work is evolving as we pass the 5-year mark of operating as a fiscally-sponsored nonprofit.
We are also grateful to those of you who were able to stay for the second part of the call, where we discussed some of the challenges currently facing the STEM ecosystem. We hope to continue these conversations in Slack and at future community events, so if you were unable to attend this time, we hope you’ll join us in the future.
In this blog post, we recap some of the news Lou, Camille, and Katie shared in the “updates from CSCCE” section of the call.
Updates to the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program
In 2023, we launched a pilot cohort of a certification program that builds on the foundational material covered in our Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF) course to offer a comprehensive professional development experience to STEM community managers. We welcomed a second cohort to the program in 2024.
At the same time, we heard from many of you that time and funding constraints made the cohort-based, one-off payment model we were piloting a barrier to participation. In response to this, we’ve been revising our processes behind the scenes to make it possible for you to:
- Join the program at any time, while still accessing the benefits of being part of a cohort of learners though participation in a private Slack channel and connecting with others during courses, Mini-workshops, and Quarterly Skills Share Sessions
- Complete your orientation to the program asynchronously via Canvas, our learning management system, reducing the scheduling burden and supporting you in joining at any point during the year
- “Pay-as-you-go” – we’re still finalizing the infrastructure needed to fully accommodate this option, but ultimately you will be able to complete CSCCE trainings one at a time and gradually accumulate the credits needed to receive certification
We’ve also added our new Project Management for Scientists Bootcamp (PMB) to the program as a third elective course offering, and continue expanding our catalog of Mini-workshop options, including with the Introduction to Project Management session (PMI).
If these updates help you in deciding to join the program, please let us know by reaching out to training@cscce.org. We’d be happy to set up a 30 minute informational call to discuss your options further.
Training offerings through the end of the year – let us know what you’re looking for!
Certification is not the only way you can access CSCCE’s training courses and Mini-workshops. All of our trainings are also available for general registration (most do not have a prerequisite for participation, however if you are planning to enroll in Content Design (CODE) we strongly suggest you complete CEF first, and before taking PMB we ask that you complete the Introduction to Project Management for Scientists Mini-workshop, PMI).
Currently, registration is open for several of our Mini-workshops, as well as our first general registration offering of PMB. Information about all of these offerings can be accessed via the calendar on our website.
We are also actively planning out our training calendar for the rest of the year, so understanding your interest and ability to participate in our additional multi-week courses is particularly important to us right now. If you are interested in taking CEF, CODE, PMB, Creating Community Playbooks (PBK), or Nurturing Online Communities (NOC) in the next 10-12 months, please let us know using this short Google form.
You can also use the form to indicate your interest in the Certification Program, and to tell us more about why you are unable to join CSCCE online trainings (e.g., your timezone is incompatible with our general registration trainings, or you have limited access to professional training budget).
Birdaro – a new project “coming soon”
As we’ve been hinting at for a few months now, we have been diligently working behind the scenes to stand up a new “sub-brand” of CSCCE that focuses on the particular challenges of sustainability and scaling in scientific open-source projects. Birdaro (named after the Esperanto word for a flock of birds and in honor of the leaderless organization of starling murmurations) will launch later this month, with a call for applications to a new, FREE 12-week training program and opportunities for open-source leaders to connect in community. More soon!
CSCCE core frameworks and resources
Earlier this year, we started releasing a new collection of resources all about creating community-engaged content. We developed these resources as core texts for our CODE course, the only online training we’re aware of that blends community engagement and content creation, and also to support all STEM community managers as they develop scaffolding, resources, and regular programming for their members.
These resources are the latest addition to CSCCE’s free library of PDFs, which you can find and download from Zenodo. On the call, we highlighted some of the frameworks and collections that continue to underpin our trainings and consultancy, and that are available to all STEM community managers to apply in their own work. These include:
The CSCCE Community Participation Model – A framework to describe member engagement and information flow in STEM communities.
The CSCCE Skills Wheel – Five core competencies and 45 skills to describe the role of the community engagement manager in STEM.
The PACT model for more engaging virtual meetings and events – A four-part framework outlining the key elements to consider when planning a virtual meeting or event: P for purpose, A for attendees, C for community management, and T for tech tools.
CSCCE’s Community Manager Case Studies – Two-page snapshots of how individual community managers came to their roles, what activities they support, and what they most enjoy about their work.
CSCCE’s Community Profiles – 2-3 page infographic-style tip sheets highlighting member demographics, programming, funding and what community management looks like.
Consultancy and client work – how we can work with you to support your community
Our staff team brings together individuals with experience in science and social science research, community management in-person and online, as well as communications, product management, and curriculum development. Over the last five years, we’ve used these skills to consult on a number of projects with clients across the STEM ecosystem.
Today, we are well-equipped to support community-building in STEM before, during, and after a community’s existence:
- Before a community is launched, we can support you in hiring community management staff and building your community team, help you develop your community strategy through member research, and support you in choosing and launching your online community platform.
- During the lifetime of a STEM community, we regularly mentor community managers, conduct ongoing member research and formative evaluation, host private workshops and trainings, lead content and programming revamps, and support the creation and maintenance of playbooks and other scaffolding materials.
- At the end of a community or program, we have been involved in project archiving, conducting audits of community materials, administering summative evaluations, and consulting on community evolution
We currently have openings for new clients, so if you would like to work with us in 2025, please let us know by emailing info@cscce.org.
Future programming in the CSCCE community of practice
Thanks to initial seed funding from the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, we have established a community of practice for more than 800 community managers from around the world and across all axes of the STEM ecosystem. While not everyone in our community has the job title “community manager,” they are all in some way working to support collaborative projects or nurture community, and via our shared online space have benefited from peer-support in Slack, free monthly community calls on Zoom, and opportunities to contribute to the creation of shared resources.
Since the end of 2023, however, we have not had direct funding for the community, and this has impacted the amount of staff time we’ve been able to devote to programming. As the community has grown, however, we’ve heard a couple of recurring needs from our members that involve creating more specialized channels for connection.
So, if you are a member of our community of practice and you are interested in:
- Organizing local meetups for STEM community managers in your geographic area
- Hosting a special interest group in Slack (either taking over an existing channel or starting something new)
- Joining regular, agendaless Zoom-based check-ins at which you can discuss topical issues with trusted colleagues
…please let us know! While we are happy to support these endeavors, we do need community members to help us, both as participants AND as leaders.