Claire Mizumoto
Amy Neeser

Library - Room 1312
Wed, Jul 17 3:00pm - 3:45pm

Many research support groups across the UC system are not engaging with (or may be completely unaware of) the many regional and national organizations that exist to support research IT professionals. As such, they are missing the chance to connect with peers, learn about how others are addressing challenges, and what good practices are emerging. This leads to time and resources lost to reinventing wheels, and ultimately to less effective support of research on our campuses. Organizations in the national ecosystem that support research IT professionals are at the foundation of the ability to connect with peer professionals, provide professional development, and improve research computing and data support.

In this session, leaders of two Research IT groups (at UC San Diego and UC Berkeley) will describe the ecosystem of these organizations, explain what each has to offer, and how they relate to one another. We will present use-cases for engagement, and describe examples of what we have seen as real return on time invested in engaging with the different organizations. We will solicit use-cases from attendees and support a discussion on recommendations for best-fit organizations to meet stated needs and objectives.

The organizations that we will describe include:

  • ACI-REF Virtual Residency (VR)
  • Advanced Research Computing on Campuses (ARCC) (http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/Conferences/ARCC/)
  • Advanced Cyberinfrastructure-Research and Education Facilitators (ACI-REF) (https://aciref.org)
  • The Campus Champions (https://www.xsede.org/web/campus-champions) (https://www.xsede.org/community-engagement/campus-champions)
  • The Campus Research Computing Consortium (CaRCC) (http://carcc.org)
  • The Carpentries (https://carpentries.org/)
  • CENIC (https://cenic.org/)
  • The Coalition for Academic Scientific Computing (CASC) (https://casc.org)
  • EDUCAUSE (https://www.educause.edu/)
  • Internet2 (https://www.internet2.edu/)
  • The Research Data Access & Preservation Association (RDAP) (https://rdapassociation.org/)

In addition, many IT professionals have little or no experience with publishing, and yet papers and presentations are the “coin of the realm” for the faculty and researchers that we support. Learning to capture what is significant about our work on a project or service, and to share that with our community, is an important professional development opportunity. We will discuss opportunities for describing the work we do, and presenting in peer-reviewed venues like EDUCAUSE, and the Practice & Experience in Advanced Research Computing Conference Series (PEARC) (https://www.pearc.org/).

Takeaways:

Attendees will understand the broad landscape of regional and national organizations that support Research IT professionals. This will be useful at two levels:

  1. Through in-session sharing, individuals can use this as the start of a personal plan for engagement at the national level, both for professional development as well as to leverage a community for problem solving.
  2. Groups can use the understanding to develop a strategic engagement plan that addresses the challenges and pain-points they face in supporting research on their respective campuses.

In addition, attendees will understand the professional development opportunities in presenting their work to peers, and how and where to do this.

Previous Knowledge
None required.

Software Installation Expectation
N/A

Session Skill Level
Beginner

Session Track
Supporting Research and Researchers