project management Archives

Project Management for Scientists: A new training course from CSCCE!

We’re excited to end the year by announcing two new trainings in the CSCCE training portfolio that focus on project management – with the opportunity to register for one now and to let us know if you’d be interested in the second!

In early December 2024, we ran a pilot offering of a brand new multi-module training, Project Management for Scientists. We developed the course with funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and piloted it with almost 30 CZI grantees. This training followed a 2-hour long Introduction to Project Management that we ran earlier in October which a larger group of 50 participants attended.

In 2025, we’ll be making both of these trainings more widely available, and in this blog post, we share more about who they’re for and also the different formats they could take.

We’d love to hear from you if you’re interested in taking the trainings as an individual. Let us know your preferences for a bootcamp vs. a multi-week training, as well as your availability in the first half of 2025, using this short form.

Additionally, if you think your community or organization would benefit from a private cohort of the trainings, you can also let us know by emailing training@cscce.org.

January’s community call recap: Project management tools for community managers

Our January call focused on project management tools and how they can streamline collaborations and improve efficiency. This post includes a summary of the call, as well as video clips of presentations from Lou Woodley (CSCCE; describing the tool Trello), Alycia Crall (the Carpentries; describing Asana), Anne Heberger Marino (Lean-To Collaborations, describing Mural), Ellen Dow (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, describing Todoist).

January’s community call: Project management tools and best practices for community managers

For our first call of 2022 we’re focusing on project management. It’s a common time of year to be thinking about big picture planning and strategy development, both individually and for your organization or team. And, there are a number of online tools out there that can help you map out your month, quarter, and/or year and keep track of tasks as you go.

In response to several requests, this month’s call will include a general introduction to some of the rationale behind project management as well as active demos of four different platforms that can help you with your project management; Trello, Asana, Mural, and Todoist. We’ll share how we keep on top of things here at CSCCE, as well as hear from three members of the CSCCE community of practice who use one or more of these platforms in their own community management work. There’ll also be an opportunity to try at least one of the tools in breakouts to help guide your own work.

Join us on Wednesday, 19 January at 4pm UTC / 11am EST for more. Click here to join the Zoom meeting.

Community calls coming up in Q1 of 2022

CSCCE community calls are a monthly opportunity for shared learning and connection. Members of the community of practice as well as anyone interested in the topic under discussion each month are all welcome to join, and we encourage you to spread the word among your own networks!

In this blog post, we share our plans for the first three calls of 2022. We also talk about the ways that we chose topics to highlight, the different kinds of formats we have hosted in the past, and how you can propose topics and/or present on future calls.

Stepping Beyond the Personal and Professional Silos of a Research Project Manager

Brit Myers is a Project Manager for the Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S. (ARCUS), a non-profit membership organization with the mission of facilitating cross-boundary Arctic knowledge, research, communication, and … Continue reading “Stepping Beyond the Personal and Professional Silos of a Research Project Manager”

Brit Myers is a Project Manager for the Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S. (ARCUS), a non-profit membership organization with the mission of facilitating cross-boundary Arctic knowledge, research, communication, and education. She works to enhance the ability of the highly distributed Arctic research community to connect with one another and work more effectively through collaborative research programs.

Last year I was invited by Dr. Luisa Cristini from the Alfred Wegener Institute to co-convene a session at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting. Luisa was interested in submitting a session proposal specifically focused on issues relevant to the work of scientific project managers – a job title she and I share. Hoping to attract a larger number of abstracts to the proposed AGU session, we also agreed to reach out to the AAAS CEFP community to see if our session topic might be similar enough to their interests to warrant collaboration. Luckily, CSCCE’s Lou Woodley and another group of #CEFP17 session conveners agreed to join us in our efforts!

However, as we drafted the combined AGU session description – and during a number of other conversations that followed – there was some genuine uncertainty about where the boundaries might stand between those focused on professional development from a “Project Manager” standpoint vs. that of a “Research Community Manager.” For anyone with a Project Management job title, it is hard to forget that Project Management is a well-established profession with an official Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) regulated through accreditation organizations like the Project Management Institute. Alternatively, the “Research Community Manager” is viewed by the new Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement as an “emerging profession,” distinct enough from both traditional project management and/or non-scientific online community management to justify the time and attention needed to professionalize and institutionalize the role.

Image by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/building-ceiling-classroom-daylight-373488/

Continue reading “Stepping Beyond the Personal and Professional Silos of a Research Project Manager”