2.0 September 27, 2022: Community Building and Engagement and DEI plans

Agenda

• Summary notes from first meeting: 1.0 Initial Meeting - Sept 13, 2022

• Operations: Welcome Tom Maiden!

• From last time - start to dig into our plans for community building and engagement (from our proposals):

  • What kind of relationship do we seek with our communities?

  • How can we expand participation to new and underserved communities?

    • How are we planning on measuring community expansion for new and underserved communities?

  • How can we deepen participation in our existing communities?

XSEDE2 DEI measurements - see

• Community survey report 2022 - anticipate publication soon.

• Annual report: report year 6: https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/items/123874

Two relevant metrics from the annual report: 

“Number of Sustained under-represented individuals using XSEDE resources and services via the portal” (page 29-30) (PDF page 40-42)

(note discussion comment:

“The target for sustained usage of XSEDE resources by historically under-represented groups was conservatively set due to concerns about this group of community members being impacted by the uncertainties of the transition to ACCESS. The strong numbers indicate that the engagement of the researchers from historically underrepresented groups with advanced computing has matured; they are comfortable relying on national resources to conduct their research, and now represent 18% of the sustained users.”

“Number of new underrepresented individuals using XSEDE resources and services via the portal” (page 30-31) (PDF p41-42)

 (note discussion comment:

“In RY6, the number of new individuals from historically underrepresented communities in

advanced computing declined. For both the number of new community members and the number of new underrepresented individuals, the quarterly targets were not met. As previously identified, the most successful mechanisms for recruiting new users are through in-person conference exhibits, campus visits, and in-person training events offered by XSEDE and Campus Champions. Hence, given the longitudinal trend, the low numbers appear to be a direct reflection of the lack of in-person opportunities.”

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Present: Alana Romanella, Jay Alameda, Robert Deleon, Agbeli Ameko, Tom Maiden

Regrets:

Notes:

Initial discussion: recap on communities

• Support is working with NSF CC* and CyberTraining awards

  • Small portion of personnel time from these awards can go to Support to improve engagement (low touch engagement or outreach).

  • Drew parallel between allocation credits - and a potential equivalent system of credits in support (which don’t currently exist).

    • One idea - earn credits for contributing to knowledgebase or documentation, redeem credits to book some (consulting) time with an expert.

Community Building and Engagement Plans, DEI Plans

• Does each track have an engagement plan, and does each track have a DEI plan?

  • Allocations:

    • Reaching communities through first touch activities (events, conferences, hackathons)

    • DEI is subset of continuous improvement, eg, could measure interest in ACCESS via polling at conferences, and track this over time.

      • Find what community wnts

  • Support

    • Does not have a DEI plan

      • Have an engagement structure, but without a credit system

        • Premier - only those with funding

        • Plus - 10 projects per year, 3-6 months with student funded to work with research group/project

        • Community Grant: researchers to contribute to database

      • Community promotion: via conferences such as SC, PEARC, Tapia

    • Would welcome developing a broader DEI plan (at the coordination level).

  • Metrics

    • Don’t have a plan for DEI and community engagement

    • Would like to hitch onto broader community engagement and DEI plans

    • Users and resource providers are important parts of their communities

  • Operations

    • new representative (Tom Maiden, from PSC)

      • needs to go through proposal to find community engagement and DEI plans

• How can we expand participation to new and underserved communities?

  • Operations:

    • need to revisit previous non-standard RPs (eg, instruments)

    • Used to have evaluation team help with metrics, need to figure out what we can do without an evaluation team

      • Action: invite @Lizanne DeStefano (Unlicensed) to one of our meetings to discuss measurements

  • Allocations

    • have draft DEI plans

      • Looking into constraints and challenges for MSIs and non-R1 institutions

      • Some structural changes to make allocations more equitable

    • Engagement

      • Direct to communities through multiple channels

        • conferences

        • hackathons

        • workshops

    • What does DEI and HPC landscape look like

      • through ACCESS programs, other related programs?

      • How do you measure progress?

      • pointed to Nature article noting challenges with diversity in academia:

        • https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02998-w

  • Metrics:

    • It is important to develop an important metric to measure (DEI engagement, for instance).

  • Support:

    • Supports developing a common ACO DEI engagement plan

    • This notion supported by all the tracks.