Call for Contributions: Data Carpentry Ecology and Software Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committees

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In mid-2017, Data Carpentry piloted a Curriculum Advisory Committee (CAC) for the Genomics curriculum. The goals for this committee were to provide general oversight, vision, and leadership for the full Genomics lesson stack, to ensure that the lessons stay up-to-date with existing best practices in the field, and to continue to serve the needs of genomics practitioners attending our workshops. Genomics Curriculum Advisors met after the initial Genomics lesson publication in November to discuss proposed structural and major topical changes to the lessons and will be helping the Genomics Maintainer team to make decisions about these changes as we prepare for a second release this year.

Since first piloting the idea of a CAC, we’ve learned from our Maintainer community that this type of overall guidance is strongly desired by Maintainers for other lessons! Maintainers often face challenges trying to decide whether proposed large-scale changes are appropriate for their lessons. As Maintainers are usually not deeply familiar with other lessons in their curricular stack (and aren’t expected to be!), they often wonder how changes to their lesson will affect other lessons taught in the same workshop. Curriculum Advisors help to provide this higher-level oversight and take some of this burden away from the lesson Maintainers.

Due to overwhelming enthusiasm from the Maintainer community, we are now recruiting for Curriculum Advisors for the Data Carpentry Ecology lessons and the Software Carpentry full lesson stack. Applications are open to all Carpentry community members. We strongly encourage applications from community members with current classroom teaching experience, university or college faculty and staff, and Maintainers for these lessons.

Read more about the role of Curriculum Advisors.

Apply to join the Data Carpentry Ecology Curriculum Advisory Committee

Apply to join the Software Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee.

Applications will be open through March 16th, 2018. Please contact Erin Becker (ebecker@carpentries.org) with any questions.