Managing Cyberinfrastructure Centers in a Demanding Era: The Development of Science Executives

这个项目的目标是开发和测试一个“科学主管”教育项目。科学主管人员是负责领导实现大规模科学和工程的中心的高级科学人员。中心比项目范围更广，必须在大学、国家实验室和研究所、政府机构和公司等机构中存在。中心领导通常是具有很强的项目管理技能的科学家或工程师，他们通过试错来学习如何管理和领导工作，就像企业家一样。然而，他们往往缺乏能够提高中心效率的知识。就像创业组织在成长过程中受益于专业管理一样，科学和工程中心也将受益。这些中心不是“正常”的组织，所以典型的商业高管教育模式不适用。科学和工程中心是复杂的混合体，具有嵌套的社会网络、短暂的角色、不断变化的、“漂移”的安排，以及日益跨学科、协作、地理分布、计算和数据密集型的工作。在组织治理、创新管理、资源供应、劳动力发展和减少周转、过程改进和战略领导方面需要集中准备。本项目将高管教育中所体现的组织科学应用于CI中心高管的需求。具体而言，该项目将涉及：(1)确定中心内的杠杆点，其中改进的行政领导可能会影响科学和工程成果；(2)发现并开发一门课程，以传播基于组织科学的“最佳实践”，为科学主管人员提供技能、工具和技术；(3)通过修改后的“科学高管教育”战略，为科学高管提供有效、重点培训的试点课程；(4)举办研讨会和辅导课，以评估和改进课程，并传播在整个项目中获得的知识；(5)积极促进和寻求初级人员和传统上代表性不足的群体的参与，从而鼓励当前和未来科学高管的职业发展，明确关注更广泛的包容性。

The goal of this project will be to develop and test a "science executive" education program. Science executives are the senior scientific personnel charged with leading the centers that enable large-scale science and engineering. Centers are broader than projects and must endure within institutions such as universities, national labs and institutes, government agencies, and firms. Center leaders are usually scientists or engineers with strong project management skills who learn how to manage and lead on-the-job, through trial-and-error, much as entrepreneurs learn. However, they often lack knowledge that would improve the effectiveness of their centers. In the same way that entrepreneurial organizations benefit from professional management as they grow, science and engineering centers will benefit. Such centers are not "normal" organizations, so typical business executive education models will not apply. Science and engineering centers are complex hybrids with nested social networks, transitory roles, ever-changing, "drifting" arrangements, and work that is increasingly interdisciplinary, collaborative, geographically distributed, and computation and data intensive. Focused preparation is needed in organizational governance, innovation management, resource provisioning, workforce development and turnover reduction, process improvement, and strategic leadership. This project adapts organization science as embodied in executive education to the needs of CI center executives.Specifically, the project will involve: (1) identifying the points of leverage within centers where improved executive leadership might affect science and engineering outcomes; (2) discovering and develop a curriculum for disseminating "best practices" based on organization science to equip science executives with the skills, tools, and techniques; (3) delivery pilot sessions of effective, focused training to science executives through a modified "science executive education" strategy; (4) conducting workshops and tutorials to evaluate and improve the curriculum and to disseminate knowledge gained throughout the project; and (5) actively promote and seek the involvement of junior-level personnel and traditionally underrepresented groups, thus encouraging the career progression of current and future science executives with an explicit focus on broader inclusion.