CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program Archives

Infrastructure update: CSCCE now self-hosting Canvas LMS

This blog post marks the third update in a series of technology infrastructure changes at CSCCE. At the turn of the year, we moved to using Zeffy for our course sales and registrations. Then in June we introduced you to Credible, our new homegrown digital badging platform. Now, it’s time to tell you about the biggest update yet – we’ve established a self-hosted instance of the open-source learning management system, Canvas.

Canvas, a product of Instructure, is one of several similar platforms that exist to organize materials for organizations who deliver educational training courses. In the US especially, Canvas LMS is a common choice for K-12 and higher education institutions. More often than not, institutions access Canvas through Instructure-hosted instances, an arrangement that offers a lot of technical support….for a fee.

Canvas LMS is also available as an open-source platform; one you can self-host and customize for yourself (if, and this is a big if, you have in-house coding expertise). After several years of contracting with Instructure, we decided it was time to give the open-source route a try. And, thanks to some expert support, we’re happy to share that all CSCCE training courses will now run through our own Canvas instance!

This blog post curates a collection of FAQs about CSCCE’s Canvas transition for our learners. If you are interested in learning more about the behind-the-scenes process of standing up a self-hosted instance of Canvas, please contact info@cscce.org and we’d be happy to discuss!

The rationale behind the design of our modular curriculum for STEM community managers – and the opportunities that it affords

Back in 2016, we started work on the first ever curriculum for STEM community managers – initially delivered via our Community Engagement Fellows Program while CSCCE was getting started at AAAS. Right from the outset, we were using the words “modular curriculum”.

In this post, CSCCE’s Director, Lou Woodley unpacks i) what we mean by a modular curriculum, ii) how different modules can create different “flavors” of learner experience to retain engagement across the overall curriculum, and iii) what benefits and opportunities come by designing in a modular way.

Congratulations to our newest CSCCE-Certified community managers (Q3 2026)!

Each quarter, we celebrate the participants who recently completed the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program. As a modular program, individuals graduate on their own timelines, and this quarter we’re celebrating one of our earliest registrants, Kevin Gott (Computer Systems Engineer at NERSC) alongside longtime CSCCE collaborator Maria Doyle (Community Manager for Bioconductor).

In this blog post, you can read more about Kevin and Maria’s journey through the program. If learning more about their training path inspires you to consider pursuing certification with us, please send an email to training@cscce.org (please note: completing Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF) is a prerequisite for the program, and registration is currently open for our next cohort!).

MEET ALL CSCCE-CERTIFIED COMMUNITY MANAGERS

Congratulations to our newest CSCCE-Certified community managers!

Each quarter, we celebrate the participants who recently completed the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program. As a modular program, individuals graduate on their own timelines, and this quarter we’re celebrating two people who progressed through their requirements side-by-side: Jody Peters (University of Notre Dame / Ecological Forecasting Initiative (EFI)) and Pooneh Sabouri (Florida International University / STEP UP).

In this blog post, you can read more about these dedicated STEM community managers and their time in the program, as well as an early look at what we’re learning about the impact the program is having on the individuals who take part. If it inspires you to learn more about certification with us, please send an email to training@cscce.org (please note: completing Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF) is a prerequisite for the program, and registration is currently open for our next cohort!).

MEET ALL CSCCE-CERTIFIED COMMUNITY MANAGERS

Upcoming CSCCE training courses to enhance your community engagement and content design skills

Registration is now open for two of CSCCE’s multi-week training courses: Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF26W) and Content Design (CODE26Sp).

In this blog post you can find out more about each training (but please reach out to training@cscce.org if you have any questions), including various resources to support your participation.

In service of our ongoing commitment to “shining a light on the less visible,” we’ve also included some information about what it means for us to run live, cohort-based online trainings like these, and why it’s so important that we fill each cohort we offer.

An update to CSCCE’s Project Management for Scientists Bootcamp (PMB)

In 2025, we launched a new general registration project management training designed specifically for STEM (and STEM-adjacent) professionals. The training debuted in two parts: an introductory Mini-workshop (also known as PMI) and a three-week, six-module bootcamp (aka PMB). In 2026, based on feedback from participants, we’re combining these two parts (PMI + PMB) into a single training offering (that also includes a new orientation option – see below for more).

In this blog post, you’ll find an overview of the training, as well as what these recent changes mean for individual registrants, private cohorts, and participants in the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program. If you have any questions at all, please reach out to training@cscce.org.

Seven more STEM community managers have completed the CSCCE Certification Program!

Next week, we’ll be hosting our final Quarterly Skills Share (QSS) session of 2025! These sessions are a regular part of the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program that are both an opportunity for knowledge-sharing among peers, and a regular check-in at which we share news and updates.

One of those updates is that we have SEVEN more CSCCE-certified community managers to celebrate!

Rieley Auger (Global Land Programme), Sophie Bui (National Center for Supercomputing Applications), Yan-Kay Ho (Open Bioeconomy Lab & Reclone – Reagent Collaboration Network), Allie Lau (American Physical Society), Zoë Leanza (Sage Bionetworks), Johanssen Obanda (Crossref), and Curtis Sharma (Research Data Alliance) all completed their program requirements, and at next month’s QSS we’ll all get to celebrate their graduation!

This blog post highlights our newest grads’ paths through the program, as well as some reflections on what they learned during their time with us. And, for those less familiar with the program, we’ve also included a brief summary of what it involves.

Announcing the first graduates of the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program!

In September 2023, we launched the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program – a multi-modular professional development training intended to be completed over the course of approximately two years. We’re delighted to share that two of the participants are now ready to graduate as our first CSCCE-certified STEM community managers!

Congratulations to Erin Conn, Project Director of the SEA Change Community at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Miriam Krause, Director of Education, Outreach, and Diversity for the NSF Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology!

In this blog post, we’ll share more about Erin and Miriam’s experiences in the program, and how we’re celebrating their accomplishments. If you’re interested in learning more about the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program, either as an individual participant or as a financial sponsor, please reach out to training@cscce.org.

Project Management for Scientists – choose the training combo that works best for you!

A couple of weeks ago, we celebrated the graduation of our first general registration cohort of our Project Management for Scientists Bootcamp (PMB). They followed in the footsteps of our pilot cohort, which we ran for Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) grantees at the end of 2024. And we’re excited to announce that the training will be back on our calendar in November/December of this year!

In this blog post, we’ll share a little more about our thinking behind offering PMI (the Mini-workshop, An Introduction to Project Management for Scientists) and PMB as separate but connected trainings, and highlight how these trainings impacted the STEM community, program, and project managers who took them.

If you have any questions about what you read here, please contact training@cscce.org.

“There is a lot of project management advice and resources out there but having a training dedicated to STEM and its unique challenges makes it much more meaningful and immediately valuable.” – PMB24CZI participant

How Canvas LMS supports participation in the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program

As we announce a round of updates to our Community Manager Certification Program following the initial two pilot cohorts, we’re also sharing some additional information about how we deliver the program so that it’s consistently a high quality experience for learners.

In a previous post, we pulled back the curtain to describe the stages of going from piloting a training to converting it to a “steady state” offering with all the required internal and documentation and templates, as well as final versions of all learner-facing materials. In this post, we go deeper into one key piece of technical infrastructure that we’ve adopted over the past couple of years: the learning management system, Canvas.

Canvas is a powerful online platform that allows us to curate training materials and share them with our learners in a consistent, recognizable way that looks and feels like all other CSCCE outputs. It also affords the ability for learners to come back later to revisit course materials – something that’s especially useful as we build out a program as interconnected as our certification journey!

So let’s take a look at how we have adopted Canvas – and the ways in which it supports program delivery. If, after reading, you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to training@cscce.org