Workshop on Professional Development for University Research Computing Specialists

本讲习班旨在探讨一般在小型大学服务的研究计算人员社区的培训。一般来说，网络基础设施专业人员社区，包括目标子社区，以特别的方式进行培训。业界一直在推动将这些关键人员挖走，这对存在员工和培训问题的小型机构的影响尤其大。该公司计划从不同背景和机构招聘人才。本次研讨会的这一关键方面将解决服务不足的社区更好地参与和培训这一新兴专业的问题。预计这也将促进类似的协调网络和培训活动。研讨会将与超级计算会议（SC-16）同时举行；因此，它将影响并受益于SC与会者。这些培训活动与NSCI主席关于高性能计算科学劳动力发展的倡议一致，并服务于NSF促进准备以推进科学的使命。讲习班将设法查明社区需要和适当的培训材料，建立关键的社区网络，并为长期战略制定路线图。大多数教育机构拥有相对较小的研究计算支持人员，并且通常从其用户社区中招募新员工。这些工作人员接受在职培训，学习研究计算的专业技能。但是，由于工作人员人数少，失去一个人就会对剩下的熟练人员的工作量造成重大变化。很少有本地专家留下来给他当学徒，因为员工人数少限制了技能冗余的选择。本次研讨会将聚集来自美国各地的专家，代表研究计算中心、系统管理员、教育计划和其他与研究计算相关的国家协调活动的领导人，并讨论解决训练有素的研究计算专业人员短缺的可能方法。这样做的另一个目的是防止在小型研究计算中心的员工中普遍存在的职业孤立感，尤其是在旅行限制时期。

This workshop intends to explore the training of the community of research computing staff typically serving at smaller universities. In general, the community of cyberinfrastructure processionals, which includes the targeted sub community, is trained in an ad-hoc fashion. There is a constant pull from industry to hire away such critical personnel, which specially impacts smaller institutions with staff and training issues. There are plans for recruitment from diverse backgrounds and institutions. This critical aspect of this workshop will address better participation and training of underserved community for this emerging profession. This is also expected to foster similar coordination networks and training activities. The workshop will be collocated at Super Computing conference (SC-16); thus is will impact and benefit from the SC attendees. Such training activities are aligned with the presidential NSCI initiative on workforce development of scientific workforce in high performance computing, and serve the NSF's mission in promoting preparedness to advance science. The workshop will seek to identify community needs and appropriate training material, creating a critical community network, and developing a roadmap for long term strategy. Most educational institutions have relatively small research computing support staff and typically recruit their new staff from their user community. These staff are given on-the-job training to learn the specialized skills of research computing. Because of the small staff size, however, the loss of a single individual makes a significant change on the workload of the remaining skilled individuals. There is rarely a local expert remaining with whom to apprentice, as small staffs limit skill redundancy options. This workshop will gather experts from across the US, representing leaders of research computing centers, system administrators, educational programs, and other national coordination activities related to research computing, and discuss possible methods of addressing this shortage of trained research computing professionals. One of the goals is also to prevent the sense of professional isolation so common among smaller research computing centers' staffs, particularly in times of travel restrictions.