2024 CaRCC Parade — Bring Your Colleagues to CaRCC!

It’s that time of year again! Save the date for our 2024 CaRCC Parade on Tuesday, January 23 at 4pm ET / 3pm CT / 2pm MT /1pm PT.  We will introduce CaRCC for newcomers, talk about the year ahead for CaRCC, and describe opportunities for existing and new members to get more involved. It’s a great way to stay connected with the CaRCC community or kickstart your involvement in CaRCC.

Bring your Colleagues to CaRCC!   

Do you have colleagues you think should learn about and become involved with CaRCC? Have you added someone new to your team this year who may not know about CaRCC? What better way to introduce newcomers than to invite them to our 2024 CaRCC Parade where they can learn more about CaRCC and hear directly from group coordinators. 

Please also invite them to fill out our Join the People Network form and join our Slack channels to get in the loop about CaRCC activities and events. 
You, our members, are the most powerful tool we have to reach others in RCD, and we believe your colleagues will benefit from making new connections through CaRCC.

So please, bring your colleagues to CaRCC!

End-of-Year Party and Other Community Calls in December

As the calendar year winds up, please join us for the annual People Network End-of-Year Party, Thursday, December 14, 1-2:30pm ET (10-11:30am PT). Among other fun, we’ll have presentations from other communities in the broader ecosystem, “ice breakouts”, CaRCC swag for raffles and “best attire” voting, and opportunities for other casual discussion, as well as breakout rooms for to discuss People Network input and reflections on Supercomputing. Most track-specific calls will resume in January, though you can also catch a December call on rapid expansion of campus research computing and data capabilities , jointly-hosted by the CaRCC Strategy- and Policy-Facing Track and the EDUCAUSE RCD Community Group.

Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network calls (Zoom details at the end). For handy calendar entries, try the CaRCC Events Calendar. If you’re not on our mailing lists, please fill out our Join the People Network form which will also invite you to join our Slack workspace.

Annual End-of-Year Party, Dec 14 (cross-track)

Thu 12/14, 1-2:30p ET/ 12-1:30p CT/ 11am-12:30p MT/ 10-11:30a PT
Join this year’s party in your most festive attire to partake in casual fun and reflections. We’ll thank our People Network contributors from the year and hear from partners and other communities in the broader ecosystem. Breakout discussions with fun ice breakers will be followed by “best attire” voting and raffles for CaRCC swag prizes. You can also provide input to the People Network or reflection the recent Supercomputing conference, or partake in other casual discussion. Call document and usual Zoom room will be distributed via email, as usual. ‘See you there!

Strategy and Policy-Facing Track (1st Wednesdays)

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Read the report: RCD Nexus Day 2023

A new report is now available detailing the accomplishments of RCD Nexus Day 2023. Funded by a Cyberinfrastructure Center of Excellence Pilot grant from the National Science Foundation, the workshop brought together 95 research computing and data (RCD) professionals from institutions across the U.S. The event took place on July 23, 2023, and was an official co-located event of the PEARC’23 conference in Portland, Oregon. Thirty-three attendees received travel support, which allowed them to attend both RCD Nexus Day and the full PEARC23 conference.

In addition to a combined opening session and an evening networking session, the event included two concurrent workshops. Workshop 1 was related to using the RCD Capabilities Model assessment tools and was led by Patrick Schmitz of Semper Cogito Consulting, while Workshop 2 was on the topic of staff and student onboarding and led by Claire Mizumoto of University of California, San Diego. These workshops are described in detail in the full report.

Minding the Gap: EPSCoR CI Workshop report released

The CaRCC Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) Cyberinfrastructure (CI) working group has released a new report, Minding the Gap: Leveraging Cyberinfrastructure to Transform EPSCoR Jurisdictions, based on outcomes from the 2022 EPSCoR CI workshop series. EPSCoR is a National Science Foundation (NSF) program with “a mission to enhance the research competitiveness of targeted jurisdictions by strengthening science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) capacity and capability through a diverse portfolio of investments from talent development to local infrastructure.”  

The CaRCC report includes recommendations for both the NSF and EPSCoR jurisdictions and complements the workshop Working Group’s 2022 assessment-focused report, A Baseline of EPSCoR Research CI Capabilities. 

What does the report recommend? 

Read more below to see a summary of the recommendations. To see the detailed recommendations, read the full report. 

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New Capabilities Model Assessment Tool Now Available!

The Campus Research Computing Consortium (CaRCC) is pleased to announce that a new version of the RCD Capabilities Model assessment tool is now available and ready to use. This new web-based version of the assessment tool offers a much better user experience and is backed by a database that provides a more robust platform for data analysis. A new online data exploration and benchmarking portal will also be launched in early 2024.  

Why participate in the Capabilities Model? 

The Capabilities Model allows participating institutions to: 

  • Assess their support for computationally- and data-intensive research.
  • Identify potential areas for improvement. 
  • Understand how the broader community views Research Computing and Data support.   

Contributing institutions help build the Community Dataset, and enrich the resulting picture we have of our community. You will get access to the benchmarking functionality on the new portal that compares your assessment to the community at-large, as well as segments of the community (R1s, R2s, Public or Private institutions, etc.; on the new portal you can define your benchmarking peer groups!). As a contributor, you will also get access to more detailed reporting functionality on the new portal, to dig into the data and create custom visualizations. Although summary data will be publicly available, only contributors will have access to the detailed data and custom visualization feature. 

How to get started

Whether you are from one of the 56 institutions that have submitted past assessments, or if you are an organization interested in submitting for the first time, use our Quick Start Guide to walk you through the process of using the new tool. 

 And please keep reading for details on how to get help if you have questions! 

Continue reading “New Capabilities Model Assessment Tool Now Available!”

People Network and Other Community Calls in November

Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network and other community calls.

Did you know that the month of November has a Geography Awareness Week and a GIS Day? To celebrate the role of the RCD community in supporting geospatial work, the Data-Facing and Researcher-Facing track will have discussions dedicated to geographic awareness. Some other tracks will skip or reschedule this month, to avoid holidays or conferences (see below).

Also note a special cross-track call on REDCap, per recent interest and discussion within the People Network email list.

For handy calendar entries, try the CaRCC Events Calendar. If you’re not on our mailing lists, please fill out our Join the People Network form which will also invite you to join our Slack workspace.

Community-Organized Cross-Track Discussion on REDCap Deployments and Data Management

Mon Nov 6th, 12p ET/ 11a CT/ 10a MT/ 9a PT
Discussion Facilitated by: Maureen Donlin (SLU School of Medicine), Melissa Cragin (Rice University)
A few weeks back on the People Network, a member asked if anyone was using REDCap for non-health/medical data. This spawned a lively discussion and one member proposed and many agreed that it was worth organizing a discussion around REDCap. There will be 3-4 short talks on various aspects of REDCap Deployment and/or use. Everyone is welcome.

Strategy and Policy-Facing Track (1st Wednesdays)

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Seeking beta-testers for the new RCD Capabilities Model Tool

The Research Computing and Data (RCD) Capabilities Model is rolling out a new web-based version of the assessment tool that offers a much better user experience and is backed by a database that provides a more robust platform for data analysis. We need volunteers to beta test the new tool. 

Whether you are one of the over 180 institutions who requested a past assessment, or if you are new to the process, your feedback and perspective is valuable as we work to continually improve the tool. We will retain all data from the beta testing period, and so (barring any unforeseen problems), you can complete your actual 2023 submission, while also providing us valuable feedback to improve the new tool. 

How do I participate in beta testing?

Check out our Beta Testing guide, and then just  log in to the portal using your institutional credentials (you can also use Google or Microsoft to authenticate). Along the way, please use this Feedback Document to share any issues, challenges, or successes you experience. If you’d like a refresher on the RCD Capabilities Model, see the updated User Guide. 

Not familiar with the RCD Capabilities Model? Keep reading to learn more.  

Continue reading “Seeking beta-testers for the new RCD Capabilities Model Tool”

People Network and Other Community Calls for October

Greetings Community Members! 
Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network calls (Zoom details at the end). For handy calendar entries, try the CaRCC Events Calendar.
If you’re not on our mailing lists, please fill out our Join the People Network form and join our Slack channels.

Data-Facing Track (1st Tuesdays)

The Data Science Ethos – Infusing the research process with ethics and human dimensions
Speaker: Steve Van Tuyl, Program Manager, Academic Data Science Alliance
Tue. Sep 5, 1p ET/ 12a CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

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Where does RCD sit in the organization?

Many people have asked where RCD programs typically report in the university hierarchy. We have data from about 140 institutions using the RCD Capabilities model including a mix of different Carnegie Classifications but dominated by R1 and R2 institutions (about 2/3 of the total). Here’s how they described their reporting relationship:

While the dominant model is within central or campus IT, quite a few programs are run out of a college, department, or institute, and nearly one in six are organized under the campus research office.

These data may not represent the entire community, but are at least one source on this question.

Q&A about CaRCC’s new membership management tool

In the coming weeks, CaRCC will begin using a new software tool called Wild Apricot to help manage our rapidly growing membership lists, and help us communicate with you more effectively.  Wild Apricot will allow members to have greater personal control over the information they present to and receive from the CaRCC community.

Wild Apricot will not be replacing Google Drive,  Google Groups, or Slack. Although CaRCC membership lists, mailing lists, and event registrations will become centrally initiated and managed using Wild Apricot, the new system will generate and populate a Google Group –  and CaRCC will continue to use Google for document sharing, storage, and email lists as we always have.  

The following Q&A will help answer your questions about what the change means for you.

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