Join our new Mentorship Program!

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Carpentry community is growing quickly! Over a hundred new instructors have been trained in the past two months. These new instructors join our community because they’re excited to help fellow researchers who are struggling to analyze their data and because they share our commitment to reproducibility and open access. In spite of these shared values, however, a third of our instructors never go on to teach with us.

The Carpentry community has a strong tradition of supporting our instructors. We hold weekly live discussion sessions where those who are new to our community can benefit from the collective wisdom of more experienced instructors. However, we know that it helps to get some more support when starting out as an instructor. We as a community can mentor and provide that support to help the Carpentry community stay strong as we continue to grow.

Data Carpentry, in collaboration with the Data/Software Carpentry mentoring committee is piloting a Mentorship Program in the new year. This program will support instructors who are new to our community by matching them with a personal Mentor - instructors who have volunteered their time to help new instructors gain the confidence, technical skills, and teaching skills they need to successfully certify as an instructor and teach their first workshop.

We invite anyone who is interested to attend an information session. Whether you’re an instructor who wants to help your fellow instructors prepare to teach their first workshop, or a new instructor who would like some guidance - please come learn more about the program and share your thoughts about how we can best support our new instructors become active members of our community.

Please sign up on the meeting Etherpad: http://pad.software-carpentry.org/mentorship-info

If you’re interested in the program but can’t attend any of the listed times, please contact ebecker@datacarpentry.org.