Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement

On the CSCCE blog last week we posted an important update to our Canvas access policy, which will impact all past and future trainees in a multi-week (or multi-component) CSCCE professional development training. Since 2023, CSCCE has used Canvas LMS as a way of streamlining course delivery for trainers and providing a consistent learner experience in terms of accessing materials and assignments. When we first introduced Canvas, we did not have an offboarding policy, which over time has resulted in an ever-growing roster of past learners with access to the platform. This has created administrative and financial costs for us, but before we made any move to restrict access, we wanted to learn more about what our course participant value about the platform. In a new blog post, we share a brief summary of what we learned about how our learners use Canvas after distributing a feedback survey last month, and how we’re using that information to update our offboarding policy. Read the post: https://lnkd.in/g4AJeQaf If you have any questions about the blog post’s contents, especially if you are a past learner uncertain about your ongoing access your course materials via Google Drive, please contact training@cscce.org. 

Something that's been on my mind a lot lately is the idea of leaving things better than you found them. Whether I was wrapping up my time in my PhD lab, transitioning out of a role, or helping build a new program, I've often found myself thinking about what comes next for the people who follow. So much knowledge accumulates over time, and taking the time to capture it in a way that's accessible and useful can make all the difference. Taking Creating Community Playbooks with the Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement helped me understand what I had been doing all along and helped me connect familiar tools, like lab notebooks, protocols, and SOPs, into a more cohesive approach to knowledge sharing. The frameworks provided by CSCCE helped reduce the burden of figuring out what to document, where to document it, and how to keep it useful over time. The next offering of Creating Community Playbooks starts on September 15. If you've been meaning to get your documentation organized by haven't had the structure or accountability to make it happen, this course is absolutely worth your time. Register on Zeffy: https://lnkd.in/eTy9wbcg

JUST 5 DAYS LEFT to register for CSCCE’s documentation-focused training (and accountability!) course, Creating Community Playbooks (PBK). Answers to some PBK FAQS: ❓ WHO is this course for? You might be a Community Manager, Departmental Coordinator, Program Manager/Director, Assistant/Associate Professor, Lab Manager, or Project Manager - basically anyone who wants to organize their documentation into a central resource, whether it’s called a playbook, lab manual, leadership guide, or something else! ❓ WHAT is a playbook? Playbooks are written hubs that keep your community members, community champions, or community team on the same page by making visible the who, what, why, when, where, and how of your shared work together. ❓ WHY do I need one? Playbooks can serve a range of functions, including making your core documentation findable, reusable, and up-to-date, as well as reducing technical and/or social barriers to participation in your community or team by making visible shared norms around communications, co-working, and technology. ❓ WHEN does the course start? PBK26F will run on Tuesdays and Fridays beginning Tuesday, 15 September until Friday, 30 October 2026. ❓ WHERE do we meet? We’ll meet twice a week on Zoom, with ample opportunity to connect with CSCCE instructors AND other STEM professionals participating in the cohort. ❓ HOW do I sign up? Registration is via Zeffy, or you can reach out to training@cscce.org to request an invoice. But don’t delay - REGISTRATION CLOSES THIS FRIDAY, 4 September. See what we did there? 😉 ➡️ Register for PBK: https://lnkd.in/gfAUhwSG ℹ️ Visit the PBK webpage: https://lnkd.in/gdJRWiH5 📜 Download a one-page infographic about the course to share with your colleagues: https://lnkd.in/ged-fw4T

Running professional collaborations often means figuring things out on the fly—but you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Taking multiple courses with Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement provided me with lots of templates, practical framework, and the most important part; a supportive network. The center is offering two great courses this fall. Check them out! Creating Community Playbooks (PBK26F) In this workshop-style, seven-week course, we’ll talk about the different contexts in which playbooks are useful and the different strategies for creating and maintaining them. Then, you’ll use CSCCE’s playbook framework and custom templates to create a “lite” playbook of your own. Our fall offering of Creating Community Playbooks will run on Tuesdays and Fridays beginning Tuesday, 15 September until Friday, 30 October 2026. 🗓️ Register on Zeffy by 4 September 2026 https://lnkd.in/eqcDwUXB Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF26F) This eight-week course is designed to offer new and existing community managers a core set of actionable skills and strategies. Participants meet twice a week, with lecture-style content interspersed with discussion and project work. Our Fall offering of Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals will run on Mondays and Thursdays beginning Thursday, 22 October until Thursday, 10 December 2026. 🗓️ Register on Zeffy by 1 October 2026 https://lnkd.in/eTmE5AiJ About CSCCE The Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement (CSCCE) champions the importance of human infrastructure for effective collaboration in STEM. We provide training and support for the people who make scientific collaborations succeed at scale and we also research the impact of these emerging roles. Find out more about us on our website: cscce.org

What is community? We think of it as the intersection of purpose, belonging, culture, and power. We define community as: 🟣 A group of people who have come together with a shared PURPOSE (or multiple overlapping purposes) 🔵 A group to which members feel BELONGING – which cultivates commitment to it 🟢 A place where participants can shape CULTURE – by sharing information and learning together 🟡 A place where POWER can be (more) distributed For many STEM projects, building a community of practice around a shared purpose is a key aim - to share knowledge and create a support network. But community doesn’t just happen. In our upcoming 8-week training course, we’ll guide you through a series of activities and discussions to help you define your community’s purpose, develop workable engagement strategies, and outline specific content and programming ideas that will offer different ways for your members to get involved. Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF) is CSCCE’s foundational training course, through which 400+ STEM community managers have found core frameworks and vocabulary to describe their community’s purpose, refined or created strategic programming to engage community members around their shared goals, and identified ways to lower barriers to member participation. ➡️ You can register via Zeffy: https://lnkd.in/gU67dAgZ 💬 Or tell a colleague you think might be interested by sharing a link to the course webpage: https://lnkd.in/g45thQMt 💫 And if you're curious how taking CEF might change you as a community manager, we invite you to review the evaluation we conducted a couple of years ago that showed how CEF impacted both individuals and the communities they serve: https://lnkd.in/em4QYjvy You can send any questions you have about the course, including sponsorship opportunities and discount requests, to training@cscce.org.

There’s just 10 days left to sign up for one of CSCCE’s core training courses, Creating Community Playbooks (registration closes Friday, 4 September). Playbooks are written hubs that keep your community members, community champions, research collaborators, or staff team on the same page by making visible the who, what, why, when, where, and how of your shared work together. Playbooks have many different names - from user manual to contributor guide to lab handbook - but always serve the same function: They make it easier for your members to find key information, adopt common workflows, and, most importantly, feel like they belong. 📆 Our next cohort of PBK will run on Tuesdays and Fridays beginning Tuesday, 15 September until Friday, 30 October 2026. ➡️ Register here: https://lnkd.in/gfAUhwSG We’ll meet twice a week on Zoom, in sessions that combine lecture style content with co-working activities. You’ll leave the training with a clearer understanding of the different types of playbooks, privacy vs. transparency, platforms for creating and sharing playbooks, different ways of creating (or co-creating) a playbook, and how to socialize your playbook to ensure it’s used PLUS a “lite” version of your own community playbook. ❓ If you have any questions (e.g., how to commission a private cohort of this training), please reach out to training@cscce.org.

At CSCCE, we know that STEM professionals are often multi-talented individuals, who take on various tasks and responsibilities to get things done - usually on a tight budget and with multiple collaborators to coordinate. This makes them project managers by default, a skill that’s rarely formally addressed as a scientific career progresses. That’s why we created our Project Management for Scientists Bootcamp (PMB). It’s a fast-paced, 7-session online training that equips participants with a modular framework that will change how you look at project management. Close to 100 individuals from a range of contexts (including academia, government research, and healthcare) have taken this training so far, and regularly feed back to us how valuable they found it! If you’re interested in joining our upcoming session of PMB, there’s still a couple of spots available and you have until Friday, 28 August to sign up! 💡 You can register directly on Zeffy: https://lnkd.in/dTpBExUv Or reach out to training@cscce.org to request an invoice and ask any other questions you might have about the training. “Truly exceptional course that helped me both identify and proactively address with new tools knowledge and practice gaps in my own work!” - PMB alum

Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals is BACK on the CSCCE training calendar for it’s 18th general registration cohort! More than 400 individual STEM community managers have taken this training to date, positively impacting STEM communities around the world. CEF is an 8-week online course designed to offer new and existing community managers a core set of actionable skills and strategies. You’ll consider core frameworks in community engagement, learn a common vocabulary for describing a community’s purpose, refine or create strategic programming to engage community members around their shared goals, and identify ways to lower barriers to member participation. 📆 CEF26F, our next cohort, will run on Mondays and Thursdays beginning Thursday, 22 October until Thursday, 10 December 2026. ➡️ You can register on Zeffy here: https://lnkd.in/gU67dAgZ 💡 If you’ve taken CEF before, consider sharing this post with your networks: We’re offering a free Mini-workshop or Quarterly Skills share ticket to anyone who refers a colleague to the course - they just need to enter your email address when they register! Questions? Send them to training@cscce.org.

Next week, join us for our last Mini-workshop of the summer: Working with volunteers! If you’ve ever found yourself thinking things such as “I feel really self-conscious about asking for contributions from our volunteers – are we being too demanding?” and “I know that different members in our community need different things, but I don’t know where to start.” then this discussion-based workshop is for you. We’ll discuss how to flip the narrative from self-doubt and scarcity to center volunteers in a way that empowers and supports them in working together and builds your confidence as a community organizer. 📆 This live, 90-minute Zoom session will take place on Tuesday, 25 August at 10am EDT. ➡️ You can sign up via Zeffy here: https://lnkd.in/dhhMhKbP See you there! Photo by ray sangga kusuma on Unsplash

There’s still time to join us in September for our next offering of Creating Community Playbooks (PBK)! This course distills years of CSCCE staff experience creating and implementing playbooks for a range of different STEM projects, and makes our tried and tested template available for you to adapt. You’ll also learn more about the different types of playbooks, privacy vs. transparency, platforms for creating and sharing playbooks, different ways of creating (or co-creating) a playbook, and how to socialize your playbook to ensure it’s used. And you’ll leave the course at the end of October with a “lite” playbook of your own, and a plan for how you’ll socialize it with your community members. Key info: 📆 PBK26F will run on Tuesdays and Fridays beginning Tuesday, 15 September until Friday, 30 October 2026. 🗣️ Live sessions will take place on Zoom at 11am EDT / 3pm UTC Registration is via Zeffy: https://lnkd.in/gfAUhwSG ℹ️ More info is on our website: https://lnkd.in/gdJRWiH5 “Having an all-encompassing framework for creating a playbook is invaluable. It [would have] taken a lot of time for one person to think about what to include in a playbook and create a template.” – PBK alum