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2022 RCD Capabilities Model Office Hours

Have questions about how to get started with the Research Computing and Data Capabilities Model? Or are you already working with it and just want to discuss the process, or a particular aspect of the assessment tool? Join working group members and your colleagues in the community at one of our upcoming Office Hours to get help, ask your questions, and share your experiences! Drop in for a few minutes or stay for the whole hour.

Office Hours for 2022 are scheduled for:

the 2nd Tuesday of each month

for 1 hour at 1pm ET, 12noon CT, 11am MT, 10am PT

For details on how to join, email the RCD CM working group at capsmodel-help@carcc.org, or subscribe to the capsmodel-discuss@carcc.org discussion list.

PEARC21 report: Building a shared RCD community resource

It’s almost PEARC conference time again and we’re looking forward to the Fifth Workshop on Strategies for Enhancing HPC Education and Training on Monday, July 11, 2022. 

That made us look back and remember some of the great things that happened at last year’s PEARC conference. In case you missed it, check out this report: Towards a National Best Practices Resource for Research Computing and Data Strategic Planning. It shares the activities and findings of a CaRCC RCD Nexus workshop that brought together Research Computing and Data (RCD) professionals to discuss leading practices for developing effective strategic plans for their Research Computing and Data programs. 

The 2021 workshop had three goals:

  1. Share the experiences of universities who are currently using the RCD Capabilities Model as part of their RCD strategic planning work, including lessons learned. 
  2. Discuss the range of RCD strategic planning models across the community and identify approaches to building a strong strategic planning practice. 
  3.  Work towards the development of a shared community resource to support strategic planning for RCD, identify potential elements of such a resource and a near-term roadmap for development. 

The report documents the workshop activity and findings, including shared observations as well as recommendations. In particular, it identifies four themes that emerged as “Desired elements of a strategic planning resource”: 

  •  A repository of templates, examples, and models of strategic planning 
  •  A collection of narratives and use-cases that describe successful programs 
  •  Examples and practices for communication strategies related to strategic planning 
  •  A program of mentoring and identifying expertise related to strategic planning 

The information and insights  in this report are being used to inform what we make available in our RCD-Nexus Resource and Career Center. Want to know more? Read the full report.

2021 RCD Capabilities Model Community Data report now available

The second Research Computing and Data (RCD) Capabilities Model Community Dataset report is now available through CaRCC’s RCD Nexus as part of a project funded by the National Science Foundation. The report aggregates assessments contributed by 51 higher education institutions, providing insight into the current state of support for RCD.

Report data is intended to support strategic planning and decision-making for campus leadership, funding agencies, RCD leaders, and others interested in advanced technologies that enable research.  

The RCD Capabilities Model Community Dataset report is now available.

Themes that emerged from the 2021 data include:

  • There is generally stronger support for Researcher-Facing, System-Facing, and Strategy and Policy-Facing areas, than for Data-Facing and Software-Facing capabilities.
  • R1 institutions have much higher levels of coverage than other Carnegie Classifications, particularly in certain areas.
  • EPSCoR institutions have significant gaps in capabilities coverage relative to institutions in other states, including dramatic gaps in certain areas of Data-Facing support.

“This level of data has never before been readily available to the RCD community,” said Patrick Schmitz, co-principal investigator on the RCD Nexus project. “We were intrigued to see that institutions who completed a second assessment in 2021 saw a marked increase in their capabilities related to RCD strategy and policy. It’s possible the assessment is already helping them improve their programs. We will work to continue expanding the dataset in the coming years, and are pleased to offer the RCD community a solid baseline dataset to help inform strategic planning.”

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant OAC-2100003. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

April CaRCC People Network & RCD Community Calls

Mark your calendars for these upcoming CaRCC People Network calls (Zoom details at the end). For handy calendar entries, try the CaRCC Events Calendar. We also highlight other calls from our RCD Ecosystem partners and collaborators, as these events touch many, if not all, in our community.

We’d also like to bring your attention to a few, upcoming deadlines for PEARC22 being held in Boston this year:

Continue reading “April CaRCC People Network & RCD Community Calls”

March People Network and RCD Community Calls

Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network calls (Zoom details at the end). For handy calendar entries, try the CaRCC Events Calendar. We also highlight other calls from our RCD Ecosystem partners and collaborators, as these events touch many, if not all, in our community.

If you’re not on our mailing lists, please fill out our Join the People Network form and join our Slack channels.

CaRCC People Network Calls:

Data-Facing Track (first Tuesdays)

eCR Now! and COVID-19 – Breaking the Public Health Surveillance Floodgates
Discussion facilitated by John W. Loonsk MD FACMI
Tuesday, March 1st 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

Continue reading “March People Network and RCD Community Calls”

People Network Calls in February 2022 

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.

And heads-up for those wishing to contribute or get more involved: Emerging Centers has a call out for Steering Committee members!

If you’re not on our mailing lists, please fill out our Join the People Network form and join our Slack channels.

Continue reading “People Network Calls in February 2022 “

Recording Available: Annual CaRCC Parade of Activities

Video recording of the 2022 CaRCC Parade is now available on the CaRCC YouTube channel. This annual presentation at the beginning of each calendar year provides an update on CaRCC’s activities and accomplishments over the past year, and plans for the future, including opportunities for community members to get more involved.

The2022 CaRCC Parade video can be found here: https://youtu.be/28DVe1YpHB0

CaRCC YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMU1PEMM7V4X_KtPDcfB6HA

Emerging Centers track seeks Steering Committee members

The Emerging Centers track of the CaRCC People Network is seeking individuals who could meet monthly to help the co-coordinators, Jane Combs and Rich Knepper, identify topics, coordinate with speakers, and expand our reach to more institutions.

Do you have a couple of extra hours in your month to give back to your RCD community, build your professional network, strengthen your NSF Biosketch Synergistic Activities section, and have some fun with new colleagues?

If you are interested in becoming a founding member of the Emerging Centers track Steering Committee, please contact us at combsje@uc.edu, Rich.Knepper@cornell.edu or ec-coordinators@carcc.org 

Note: you do not need to be a current member of the Emerging Centers track community. We are hoping to assemble a diverse group of representatives from small and large centers/institutions, newly established centers, institutions without centers, and highly established centers. All ideas (and people!) are welcome.

Welcome to CaRCC

CaRCC – the Campus Research Computing Consortium – is an organization of dedicated professionals developing, advocating for, and advancing campus research computing and data* and associated professions. Current focus areas include building community among research computing and data professionals (see the People Network), connecting the broader research computing and data ecosystem, professionalization and workforce development, and defining stakeholders and shared value propositions for the community at a time of accelerating change.

More info at https://carcc.org/about/.

* Research computing & data involves people, scholarship, and resources… (more…)

People Network Calls, April 2021

Greetings, everyone. Welcome to Spring and April… No Joke!

Please mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network remote Zoom meetings. For handy calendar entries please try the CaRCC Events calendar.

Data-Facing Track (first Tuesdays)

Digital Scholarship Platforms and Workflows – HathiTrust Research Center and Model of Models
Eleanor Koehl (HathiTrust) and Erin McCabe (University of Cincinnati)
Tuesday, April 6, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT/ 8a HT

HathiTrust is the largest non-profit digital library in the world, and roughly 2/3 of the collection is not available for human reading. This presentation will discuss how the HathiTrust Research Center leverages compute resources at Indiana University to make text data from the HathiTrust Digital Library available for text data mining. HTRC services attempt to meet the needs of scholars with a range of skill levels, who use a variety of research methods.

UC’s Digital Scholarship Center (DSC) has developed its own platform for text mining and visualization of large-scale unstructured language datasets. This presentation will provide a demonstration of the platform in addition to reviewing topic modeling concepts that form its primary visualizations. Additionally, we will look at 1-2 analytical approaches to the platform’s output, as well as cover some of the DSC’s work / challenges with data curation, parallel modeling, and working with researchers across disciplines. 

Researcher-Facing Track (second Thursdays)

On Measuring the Impact of Training
Presentations by Kari Jordan (Carpentries), and Julie Wilson Rojewski and Astri Briliyanti, CyberAmbassadors
Thurs, April 8th, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT/ 8a HT

On previous Researcher-Facing calls, we’ve had the opportunity to discuss topics relating to measuring impact and improving training. And as discussed in the Leading Practices of Facilitation, “training & education” is one of the major pillars of our efforts. Many of us provide training opportunities and struggle to define and measure “impact” or “success” — is it short terms gains (quality scores for the class & instructors, reduced support burden, and acclimating users), long term considerations (effectiveness of training programs, building relationships, promoting awareness and participation), and does it depend on the kind of training (professional skills, technical topics)?  Or are we confounding these, complicating both the objectives and outcomes?

April’s call will showcase two “case studies” of measuring training impact, where each presenter will talk about their programs, define “impact”, and explain their approach to measuring this. Please also join us by contributing to our pre-talk survey: What challenges do you currently face in measuring training impact? And what successful strategies have you tried?

Emerging Centers Track (third Wednesdays)

New Resources Available to the National Research Community: Jetstream 2, Bridges 2, and Anvil
Wednesday, April 21st, 12pm ET/ 11am CT/ 10am MT/ 9am PT/ 7am HT

Representatives from Indiana University, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, and Purdue University will discuss the new systems at each of these sites and their capabilities offered to the national research community. All of these resources will be available to researchers nationwide via the XSEDE project allocations system.

Systems-Facing Track (third Thursdays)

Experiences and Advice for Large and Small Data Centers – Cooling
Thursday April 15th, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT/ 8a HT  

Our panel will discuss experiences managing cooling (heat) in data centers – from large scale systems to clusters in closets. The brief presentations will include experiences designing and managing cooling for their infrastructure. Our panelists will take questions from participants and discuss options. Any questions about power/security will be collated for a future session.

General Track Call Information

Interested participants need not subscribe to a particular track to participate in calls. However, additional details for track members, including notes documents and any pre-call activities, will be distributed ahead of the call via the email lists and other communication channels within each track.

All calls will take place within the same Zoom room distributed via email. Please join the People Network (link just above) or contact help@carcc.org for details.

The CaRCC People Network aims “to foster, build and grow an inclusive community (termed the “People Network”) for campus CI, research computing and data professionals.” If you have received this information NOT via CaRCC’s People Network email list and you would like to join the People Network – Researcher-Facing, Data-Facing, Systems-Facing, Emerging-Centers, and other tracks – please fill in our Join the People Network form.