2017 Election: Rayna Harris

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I am really excited to stand in election for the 2017 Software Carpentry (SWC) Steering Committee so that I can continue to serve this amazing community.

##Software Carpentry Involvement I was first exposed to Software Carpentry by April Wright, who suggested that I attend the Instructor Training Workshop at UC Davis in January 2015. In 2015 I co-taught workshops at UT Arlington and New Mexico State University, I co-organized the Austin-based Instructor/Helper Retreat, served on the Mentoring and Assessment Subcommittee.

In 2016, I was elected to the SWC steering committee and I was certified as an instructor trainer. You can read my year end summary from 2016 [here]({{ site.baseurl }}/blog/2016/12/yearinreview-harris.html).

Without a doubt, my favorite Software Carpentry activity is hosting instructor discussion sessions. I learn so much when you share your experiences, and it has helped me become a better instructor and scientists. More importantly, synthesizing these community-shared experiences gives me an immense amount of energy and inspiration for continuing to engage in community-driven research education.

##Vision for 2017: open science and reproducible research
The words “open science” and “reproducible research” occupy most of my headspace these days. In January, I’m going to a curriculum development hackathon for Reproducible Research using Jupyter Notebooks and then to a Moore Foundation Early Career Researcher Symposium to synthesize our ideas about reproducibility. I’m excited to see the progress we make in this area and I look forwards to more discussions on these topics. I have so many ideas in this realm that I’m happy to discuss with anyone who will listen.

##Vision for 2017: championing mentorship Successful research driven education programs find the perfect balance between instructor-guided and self-guided learning. We all fall at different places on the spectrum of self-taught to classroom-taught programmers and teachers. I’m excited that our organizations are championing mentorship programs to enhance and extend our existing training program. This provides multiple pathways to building better educators and scientists. I’m fortunate to have multiple mentors and role models in this community both locally and globally, and I’m looking forward to hearing mentoring success stories.

##Vision for 2017: integration across levels
I hear the phrase “integration across levels” every week during seminars, papers, and discussions. I believe the concepts are quite relevant to Software Carpentry today. My continued vision is to promote integration across the organization and community so that we are better aware of the challenges and achievements of each other experiments. We’ve noticed some leaky pipes in our across levels communication, but improving this is a priority.

Thanks

Thank you for considering me for re-election for the Steering Committee. Software Carpentry has contributed vastly to my growth as an educator and scientist, and I look forward to contributing back to this excellent community in 2017 and beyond!