Developing, delivering, and evaluating professional development training in STEM

Happy New Year!

We’re excited to be back in the virtual office, convening in our virtual classrooms, and connecting with our community of practice. This month, we’ve been primarily focusing on delivering two training courses (our long-running foundational training, Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF), and a brand new course, Creating Community Playbooks (PBK)).

We’ve also opened up registration for the next cohorts of both of these courses, as well as for our second cohort of Content Design (CODE). You can find information about how to registrer for each of these courses at the links below.

Content Design (CODE)

CODE introduces a strategic approach to designing and creating community-engaged content. It’s for anyone regularly creating content – newsletters, blog posts, slides decks, and more!

CODE24Sp will run from 9 April until 17 May 2024

Creating Community Playbooks (PBK)

PBK is for anyone who wants to create or update a community playbook, collaboration guide, or lab manual, but needs some guidance and/or accountability to get it made, used, and kept up to date.

PBK24S will run from 15 July until 29 August 2024

Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF)

CEF offers new or existing community managers core frameworks and vocabulary as they refine or create strategic programming to engage community members around their shared goals.

CEF24F will run from 12 September until 31 October 2024

Training is a core part of our work at CSCCE – offering STEM community managers the tools they need to succeed as well as credentials that signal their skills to their employers and colleagues.

For some seeking training, one barrier to participation is being able to demonstrate to their organization or supervisor that investing (time and/or money) in their professional development is worthwhile. In order to better understand the impact of CSCCE’s CEF training course, and therefore help learners demonstrate value, we are currently undertaking a mid- to long-term evaluation of participant outcomes, thanks to funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. What we learn from this work will not only help us better support future learners, but also gain a clearer understanding of how structured training in community management is impacting the STEM ecosystem more broadly. You can expect us to release a report of our findings in March.

We are not the only ones thinking about measuring the impact of short-form trainings in STEM, which are critical in supporting individuals as they acquire a range of new skills. Late last year, we shared news of “The Bicycle Principles” for short form training, developed by Jason Williams, Rochelle Trachtenberg, and a number of collaborators (including CSCCE’s Founder and Director, Lou Woodley). Jason will be joining us at our April community call to discuss these guiding principles for designing and evaluating trainings, at which we’ll also present our evaluation data. Keep an eye out for more details about this call in an upcoming edition of this newsletter.

Also in this month’s newsletter:

Catch up on recent CSCCE community calls, including last week’s salon-style conversation at the intersection of self care, community care, and community management
Find out more about our upcoming February Community Call, a sneak peek into what you can expect in our Content Design (CODE) course
Let us know if you’d like to participate in our next Community Manager Certification Program cohort (which includes CODE, PBK, and much more!)

Training news

Evaluating the impact of CEF on individuals and beyond

Thanks to funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, for whom we’ve delivered two private cohorts of CEF, we’re currently evaluating the mid- to long-term impact of our longest running training course on individual learners, their communities and organizations, and the STEM ecosystem.

Find out more

The Bicycle Principles for short form trainings in STEM

In a new publication, which came out in November in PLOS ONE, CSCCE community of practice member Jason Williams (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Rochelle Trachtenberg (Georgetown University), and co-authors describe the Bicycle Principles for short form trainings, as well as a series of recommendations for their successful implementation.

Find out more
Photo by Tiffany Nutt on Unsplash

The CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program

CSCCE’s Community Manager Certification Program builds upon CEF to create a longer-form, multi-component, online program for STEM community managers to equip them and their organizations with skills and frameworks to ground their work in a community-centric leadership approach – and to signal those qualifications to others.

Find out more | Register your interest

Community call updates

All are welcome to join our monthly calls, whether you are part of our online community of practice or not. Please reach out to info@www.cscce.org if you would like to receive regular calendar invitations for these events.

Mark your calendar for February’s community call: Considering the informational roles of community-engaged content

Content creation is a core skill for any community manager in STEM. Creating content might look very different depending on your context – from writing monthly newsletters or resources and reports, to creating podcasts, videos, and slide decks. And it’s a skill that many of us pick up on the job, without formal training or a sense of strategy behind what we make. In this month’s call (taking place on Wednesday, 28 February 2024 at 11am EST / 4pm UTC), we’ll share a framework for thinking about how to share information with your community members, and how the content you create can meet specific goals in your engagement strategy: a sneak peek at some of the material we cover in CODE.

Mark your calendar | Read more

January community call recap: Burnout, exhaustion, and fractals of care

For January’s community call, we hosted a “salon” – a loosely scaffolded group discussion for sharing experiences and generating new ideas – so that our members could come together and talk about care. We’d been noticing an increasing sense of tiredness and overwhelm among STEM community managers, accompanied by an uptick in conversations about boundary-setting and self care. This month’s call was an opportunity to ask how we can care for ourselves as individuals, support our community members as they establish boundaries to protect their wellbeing, AND still encourage members to participate in community activities as an act of collective care.

December community call recap: End-of-year community potluck

On Friday, 15 December 2023 we convened our last community call of 2023 – a community potluck for members of our community of practice to take a moment to look back on the highs and lows of 2023, and think a little about what’s coming up in 2024. This was our fourth annual community potluck, and this year’s gathering was as kind and generative as always. A big thank you to everyone who came and shared a dish (which took the form of a reflection or a learning)!

CSCCE

c/o Community Initiatives,
1000 Broadway Suite #480,
Oakland, CA, 94607, USA
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info@www.cscce.org

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