The Cyberambassador training Program

Abstract

The CyberAmbassador project aims to provide professional skills training for CyberInfrastructure (CI) professionals, with the goal of developing “CyberAmbassadors” [16] who are prepared to facilitate and lead multidisciplinary, computationally-intensive research. This NSF funded program (Award Number 1730137) has the following objectives: (1) Develop curriculum that focuses on professional skills (communications, teamwork, leadership) within the context of large scale, multidisciplinary computational research; (2) Pilot, evaluate and revise the curriculum; (3) Develop “Train the Trainers” workshops to broaden the impact of the curriculum and connect with external partners to ensure the longevity of the program beyond the timeframe of the grant. This paper introduces the core curriculum, describes different modes of delivering content that we have piloted, shares preliminary evaluation results from two particularly relevant cases, and offers initial lessons learned.