The inaugural class of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation funded AAAS Community Engagement Fellows Program (CEFP) finished their on-site training In January, but their fellowship has just begun! In this post we’ll take a look at the four project teams that formed during training week and the community engagement questions they’re looking to answer over the course of the year.
Our Fellows will be contributing regularly to the blog throughout the fellowship – including reporting out the progress of their projects teams. You can catch up on their reflections so far here.
One of our founding values at Trellis is our commitment to training and supporting community managers in their efforts to nurture their communities. We knew from the start of this project that you can build a desirable toolset, but without dedicated group admins, it’s hard, if not impossible, to see groups thrive.
What’s more, community management matters regardless of the type of group involved. It could be a community of interest, gathering loosely around a particular topic. Or it could be a community of practice, wishing to advance and develop skills together. Or it could be a specific collaboration with defined goals and deliverables. In all cases, a skilled community manager will bring out the best in the group.
And that’s why, today, we’re delighted to launch a new group specifically for those running Trellis groups: The Trellis Admin Community.
Last week our team took a quick look at a recent paper, which asks “Why do academics use academic social networking sites?” The paper presents the results of a survey of 81 researchers at three Israeli institutes who were asked about their motivations for using ResearchGate and Academia.edu.
The survey draws upon the Uses and Gratifications theory from the field of media studies for its research questions – exploring whether the five broad motivations for media consumers may also apply to academics that use online professional networks. Here we outline that theory and then highlight some of the findings from the paper.
In January 2017, we wrapped up the training week for the inaugural class of the AAAS Community Engagement Fellows Program (CEFP), funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The first cohort of Fellows is made up of 17 scientific community managers working with a diverse range of scientific communities. As they continue to develop their community engagement skills and apply some of the ideas and strategies from the January training, the Fellows will report back on the Trellis blog, sharing their challenges, discoveries, and insights. Yesterday Dr. Stephanie E. Vasko shared a recap of a structured dialogue workshop that she helped lead. Today, in part two, she describes the experience of participating in the program as both a fellow and a researcher.
Posted by Stephanie E. Vasko, Research Associate and Program Manager for the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative (TDI) at Michigan State University
As both a research assistant and the program manager for the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative (TDI), I not only engage in designing, implementing, and evaluating workshops, but I also drive efforts for our community engagement (both our internal and external communities), strategic management, project management, and business efforts. On any given day of the week, I find myself wearing my client services, researcher, project manager, program manager, community engagement manager, marketer, and social media strategist member hats simultaneously. In the case of the workshop we ran for the AAAS Community Engagement Fellows I attended as both a member of the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative and a member of the Community Engagement Fellows cohort.
In January 2017, we wrapped up the training week for the inaugural class of the AAAS Community Engagement Fellows Program (CEFP), funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The first cohort of Fellows is made up of 17 scientific community managers working with a diverse range of scientific communities. As they continue to develop their community engagement skills and apply some of the ideas and strategies from the January training, the Fellows will report back on the Trellis blog, sharing their challenges, discoveries, and insights. Today, in part one of a two part series, Dr. Stephanie E. Vasko describes the custom workshop she helped facilitate during the training week.
Posted by Stephanie E. Vasko, Research Associate and Program Manager for the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative (TDI) at Michigan State University
In January 2017, we wrapped up the training week for the inaugural class of Community Engagement Fellows Program (CEFP), funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The first cohort of Fellows is made up of 17 scientific community managers working with a diverse range of scientific communities. As they continue to develop their community engagement skills and apply some of the ideas and strategies from the January training, the Fellows will report back on the blog, sharing their challenges, discoveries, and insights. Today, we’re sharing Elisha Wood-Charlson’s tale of becoming a community engagement manager.
Actually, there were several moments – four to be exact – where I stumbled into, explored, and finally embraced the role of “Community Engagement Manager”:
In January 2017, we wrapped up the training week for the inaugural class of the AAAS Community Engagement Fellows Program (CEFP), funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The first cohort of Fellows is made up of 17 scientific community managers working with a diverse range of scientific communities. As they continue to develop their community engagement skills and apply some of the ideas and strategies from the January training, the Fellows will report back on the Trellis blog, sharing their challenges, discoveries, and insights. Today, we’re featuring a piece by Jennifer Davison who describes her experience during the CEFP training week.
Posted by Jennifer Davison, Program Manager at Urban@UW
The AAAS building in Washington, DC. Photo credit: Jennifer Davison
As part of our preparations for the weeklong training in January that kicked off the AAAS Community Engagement Fellows program, the new fellows were given a worksheet to capture expectations, needs, concerns, and hopes for our time together. At the end of the form we were asked to list five emotions we hoped to feel by the end of the week. I spent an inordinate amount of time refining my list (I may have used a thesaurus), settling on the following: Focused, Heartened, Inspired, Grateful, and Prepared.
Community managers often face the challenge of communicating their communities’ impact and value back to their organization. As we reported on the blog last year, “defining and measuring shared value” is a top goal for successful communities. Now, a new report from CMX explores the ways in which brand communities are doing just that. In the 2017 Community Value and Metrics Report, CMX shares data from over 500 participants about the ways they measure the impact of the communities they work with.
Posted by Lou Woodley, Program Director – AAAS Community Engagement Fellows Program
The 2017 CEFP Fellows in a group fist bump. Photo credit: Allen Pope.
Last week, the pilot year of the AAAS Community Engagement Fellows Program launched with a week-long training for the inaugural class of Fellows at AAAS HQ in Washington, DC. Our Fellows are from diverse organizations – including scientific societies, research institutes and data sharing initiatives. You can meet all of the Fellows here.
Today, we’re introducing the last group of Fellows from the first cohort of the AAAS Community Engagement Fellows Program (You can catch up on earlier posts here). These four fellows will help develop member champion programs, online community platforms, and global scientific networks for the members of scientific professional associations.
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