professionalization

Join us for RCD Nexus Day at PEARC23!

Registration is now open for the second annual RCD Nexus Day, a one-day workshop and networking event just for research computing and data (RCD) professionals on Sunday July 23, 9am-7pm preceding the PEARC23 Conference in Portland, OR. It’s an official PEARC co-located event, and there’s no additional cost to attend. Connect with your peers as we explore the topics that matter to you and your RCD career, including:

Student and staff workforce development topics and practices
Understanding the RCD Capabilities Model assessment tools, and how best to use them at your institution (details below)

The event will be held at the main conference venue, the Oregon Convention Center. Space is limited and last year the event reached capacity, so don’t wait to register!

Travel support is available for those at U.S. institutions who request it by June 28. Just indicate your need when you register and we’ll send further information.

Check back here for a detailed agenda — coming soon!

Student Workforce Development & Internship Survey — Please participate!

The CaRCC Student Workforce Development Interest Group invites the research computing and data (RCD) community to participate in a short survey designed to gather information about existing RCD student workforce and internship programs. Survey results will be shared via the CaRCC website to provide a centralized resource for computing facilities looking to start their own student program or working to augment or improve an existing program.

Should you consent to participate, you will find the survey has two sections: A required short section that should take approximately 10 minutes, and a second optional section that requests more details about your program.

Your participation will help create a valuable resource for the entire RCD community!

Register now! Free Virtual Residency Workshop on Research Computing

Do you want to learn how to better help researchers at your institution use research technologies? Would you like to make professional connections and meet others working in the field of research computing facilitation?

The Virtual Residency Summer Introductory Workshop on Research Computing Facilitation is designed to sharpen your skills and connect you with colleagues. Registration is now open for the free workshop that will take place on Zoom June 26 – 30.

CaRCC/RCD Nexus 2022 Retrospective

Greetings, research computing and data (RCD) professionals! As we usher in the New Year, CaRCC and RCD Nexus would like to take a moment to look back on and celebrate some of our community’s exciting accomplishments in 2022:

To formalize and ensure community input and evaluation, CaRCC formed a new Advisory Committee and held its first annual meeting in January, 2022. The group consists of 12 members selected for their leadership and expertise within the broader RCD and cyberinfrastructure landscape. The group is instrumental in long-term planning as CaRCC continues a period of rapid growth.

We ramped up the work of our RCD Nexus NSF Cyberinfrastructure Center of Excellence (CI CoE) pilot grant, and began to provide more resources than ever before to both the CaRCC and broader RCD community. The RCD Nexus website currently serves as the CaRCC Career and Resource Center.

In May, 2022, CaRCC activity leaders, advisory committee members, and peers from across the RCD community met in Denver and joined remotely for a Strategic Planning Meeting. The meeting included discussion around CaRCC’s role in defining a framework for an RCD-CI professional society.

CaRCC has helped to facilitate the RCD Community Builders Group, a collaborative effort among nine RCD-CI organizations working together to support the community at-large. The group has been meeting monthly since March 2022. Additionally, CaRCC has formalized a partnership and collaboration with the CASC organization and had two meetings and presentations during which the groups discussed opportunities for collaboration.

Career Arcs paper wins Phil Andrews award at PEARC22!

Career Arcs WG members presented our paper “Understanding Factors that Influence Research Computing and Data Careers” at the PEARC22 conference in Boston. The paper was awarded Best Full Paper, Workforce Development, Training, Diversity, and Education, as well as the Phil Andrews award, granted to a manuscript deemed to be the most impactful in practice of research computing. See also the University of Central Florida post and the CI Compass post.

The primary objective of this research was to identify factors that attract professionals into the field of research computing and data, factors that influence their career advancements or changes within the RCD field, and factors that cause them to leave and pursue other fields.

*Ranking of factors defining “Advancement”, sliced by RCD Career Stage.*

Who We (RCD Professionals) Are

Thanks to the 563 RCD professionals who took the 2021 Workforce Survey, we have a better understanding of who we are as a community.

The first results from the survey were presented at PEARC22 – Characterizing the US Research Computing and Data (RCD) Workforce – and the data is available on Zenodo. While you can make your own data visualizations, there are now also visualizations of the results available on the RCD Nexus site that you’re welcome to use.

Here’s a preview:

Visit the RCD Nexus data page for more!

CaRCC at PEARC22!

In lieu of July calls for most People Network tracks, make sure to check out the below events next week at PEARC22, all of which are a direct result of CaRCC-associated efforts for the RCD community. (See the full PEARC22 schedule here.)

Sunday, July 10:

RCD Nexus Day (colocated event), all-day parallel sessions on student/staff workforce development and on the RCD Capabilities Model ‘Essentials’ version

Tuesday, July 12:

Campus Research Computing Consortium (CaRCC) Town Hall (panel, organization update)
10:30 AM-12:00 PM, White Hill Room
Understanding Factors that Influence Research Computing and Data Careers (Best Full Paper, Workforce Track; Phil Andrews Award)
3:00 PM-3:30 PM, The Loft
Characterizing the US Research Computing and Data (RCD) Workforce (paper)
3:30 PM-4:00 PM, The Loft
Words Matter! Progress in Promoting Inclusion through Language in Advanced Research Computing (panel; CaRCC represented among other organizations)
5:00 PM-6:00 PM, The Loft

Thursday, July 14

Plenary and Awards (above RCD Career Arcs paper receiving Phil Andrews award!)
10:00 AM-12:30 PM Ballroom A

We hope to see you there!

Certified Cyberinfrastructure Facilitator Training and Development (CCIFTD) BoF at PEARC22

Attending PEARC22? Don’t miss this birds of a feather (BoF) session organized by Henry Neeman (University of Oklahoma), Dana Brunson (Internet2), and Dirk Colbry (Michigan State University).

Thursday, July 14 from 9-10am in the Berkeley/Clarendon rooms

Overview: The Certified Cyberinfrastructure Facilitator
Training and Development (CCIFTD) program is a first-of-its- kind, non matriculated certification of professional development for CI Facilitators. CCIFTD’s role is to attest to proficiency in core skills needed for facilitating computing/data-intensive research, across all Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The emphasis is on crucial professional/interpersonal skills, and complementary CI technical topics. CCIFTD focuses on establishing both (a) the set of skills and (b) a means for determining whether a CI Facilitator has these skills.

Motivation: The CI workforce suffers from a critical deficit of CI Facilitators, the CI professionals who work directly with researchers to advance computing/data-intensive aspects of their research. a vital role at many research institutions. Currently, there is a clear sense of the nature and value of the CI Facilitator role, but no well-defined set of skills agreed upon by the CI Facilitator community at large.

Methodology: 1. Determine the skills that are most valuable
for CI Facilitation, by surveying (i) experienced
CI Facilitators, (ii) CI organization leaders such as
supercomputing center directors, and (iii) STEM researchers
who use CI. 2. For each such skill, develop a badge,
specifically a training mechanism, an examination instrument,
and its scoring rubric, via pilot testing at workshops and
online. 3. Construct certification pathways, subsets of badges
that collectively merit certification. 4. Test badging methods.
5. Evaluate the CCIFTD program, both formatively during this
pilot project and summatively at the end, to improve CCIFTD
as it progresses and to determine how successful it has been.

CaRCC Activities at PEARC21

Greetings to members of the Campus Research Computing (CaRCC) Communities!

The PEARC21 Virtual Conference (July 19-22) is almost here. Be sure to attend the many great workshops, tutorials, presentations, and panels from persons in the community. And here are some of the CaRCC-related activities you won’t want to miss:

July People Network/RCD Community Calls and RCD Survey

Greetings, members of the Campus Research Computing Consortium (CaRCC) People Network and beyond!

Before you mark your calendars, I want to make sure you saw the opportunity to participate in a study of the Research Computing and Data Workforce. Please also share this with others on your teams and relevant communities:

Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network Calls. For handy calendar entries, please try the CaRCC Events Calendar.

We’d also like to highlight other calls from our RCD Ecosystem partners and collaborators, as these events touch many, if not all, in our community.

Finally, we have brief information about CaRCC and the People Network. If you’re not on our mailing lists, please fill out our Join the People Network form