Leveraging Northeast Cyberteam Successes to Build the CAREERS Cyberteam Program: Initial Lessons Learned

Andrew Sherman, John Goodhue, Julie Ma, Kaylea Nelson, Eric Brown, Christopher Carothers, Galen Collier, Adrian Del Maestro, Andrea Elledge, Wayne Figurelle, John Huffman, Gaurav Khanna, Neil McGlohon, Sia Najafi, Jeff Nucciarone, Anita Schwartz, Bruce Segee, Scott Valcourt, and Ralph Zottola

Volume 13, Issue 1 (April 2022), pp. 38–43

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/13/1/7

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BibTeX 
@article{jocse-13-1-7,
  author={Andrew Sherman and John Goodhue and Julie Ma and Kaylea Nelson and Eric Brown and Christopher Carothers and Galen Collier and Adrian Del Maestro and Andrea Elledge and Wayne Figurelle and John Huffman and Gaurav Khanna and Neil McGlohon and Sia Najafi and Jeff Nucciarone and Anita Schwartz and Bruce Segee and Scott Valcourt and Ralph Zottola},
  title={Leveraging Northeast Cyberteam Successes to Build the CAREERS Cyberteam Program: Initial Lessons Learned},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2022,
  month=apr,
  volume=13,
  issue=1,
  pages={38--43},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/13/1/7}
}
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Given the pivotal role of data and cyberinfrastructure (CI) in teaching and scientific discovery, it is essential that researchers at small and mid-sized institutions be empowered to fully exploit them. While access to physical infrastructure is essential, it is equally important to have access to people known as Research Computing Facilitators (RCFs) who possess a mix of technical knowledge and interpersonal skills that enables faculty to make the best use of available computing resources. Meeting this need is a significant challenge for small and mid-sized institutions that do not have the critical mass to build teams of RCFs on site. Launched in 2017, the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Northeast Cyberteam (NECT) built a program to address these challenges for researchers/educators at small and mid-sized institutions in four states — Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont — while simultaneously developing self-service tools that support management and execution of RCF engagements. These tools are housed in a Portal called Connect.cyberinfrastructure and have enabled adoption of program methods by the broader research computing community. Initiated in 2020, the NSF-funded Cyberteam to Advance Research and Education in Eastern Regional Schools (CAREERS) has leveraged the NECT methods and tools to jumpstart a program that supports researchers at small and mid-sized institutions in six states and lays the groundwork for an additional level of support via a distributed network of experts directly accessible by the researchers in the region. This paper discusses findings from the first four years of NECT and the first year of CAREERS.