A free MSU College of Engineering-driven program developed to teach people how to work more effectively in interdisciplinary teams has catapulted its way into the international spotlight.
CyberAmbassadors, led by faculty members Katy Luchini Colbry and Dirk Colbry, was created in 2017 with a National Science Foundation grant and recently hit the 11,000 participants mark.
The program has trained individuals from 40 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico, as well as in Canada, Germany, India, Nigeria, Qatar, South Africa, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates.
Participation keeps growing, with ongoing trainings in communications, teamwork and leadership offered in-person and virtually. The American Society for Engineering Education recently announced that Katy Luchini Colbry and Dirk Colbry will be inducted into the ASEE Hall of Fame in recognition of the global impact of their CyberAmbassadors project.
With more than 24 hours of curriculum materials available, trainings can be customized to specific audiences and learning goals. Participants who complete at least 9 hours of training in communications, teamwork and leadership skills earn a certificate recognizing their professional development.
The program was originally funded by a $500,000 National Science Foundation grant to provide workforce training for the emerging cyberinfrastructure industry, with the goal of helping foster interdisciplinary teamwork between experts in advanced computing and experts in other areas of STEM (science, technology, engineering, math).
The CyberAmbassadors project continues to be supported by a partnership between Michigan State University and Tau Beta Pi, an engineering honor society.
Strong communications, teamwork and leadership skills are important for the success of interdisciplinary teams that use supercomputers to advance science and engineering research because the technology is complicated and constantly evolving, Katy Luchini Colbry said.
"Computational experts understand how to leverage a supercomputer, but in order to use those resources to solve a problem in an area like mechanical engineering, you need to be able to communicate effectively across disciplinary boundaries," Katy Luchini Colbry said.
The CyberAmbassadors program started with pilot trainings during the 2017-18 academic year at MSU and as part of a national training program hosted by the University of Oklahoma, serving almost 350 participants in the first year.
The program has grown exponentially since then, quadrupling in size in the second year and reaching more than 4,200 annual trainings by year six.
Dirk Colbry explained that much of this growth is due to a "train the trainers" effort that prepares volunteers to provide the CyberAmbassadors training for their own institutions, companies and communities.
“By training others to teach with the CyberAmbassadors curricula, the program can reach far more participants than we could train by ourselves," Dirk Colbry said.
There are currently more than 120 trained facilitators in 33 states, plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and Canada.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the CyberAmbassadors team had to improvise and create interactive, online training programs using real-time videoconferencing tools.
Since then, CyberAmbassadors’ online and in-person courses have been used at universities and national laboratories, at science and engineering firms, and as part of outreach efforts like a workforce re-training effort in Mississippi. The courses have also helped build teamwork skills for a high school Esports team in Arizona.
The CyberAmbassadors training has also been offered at conferences hosted by the Research Data Access & Presentation Association, the National Association of Collegiate Honor Societies, Internet2, PEARC, the Great Plains Network, the Rocky Mountain Advanced Computing Consortium, the Society of Women Engineers, and the American Society for Engineering Education.
Tau Beta Pi has adopted the CyberAmbassadors curriculum as the core of its Engineering Futures Professional Development program, which offers free training for thousands of engineering students and professionals annually.
CyberAmbassadors materials are also being used to provide training as part of three ongoing federally funded projects:
- The Cross-Institutional Research Engagement Network (CIREN) developed by Arizona State University and the University of Tennessee Knoxville
- A partnership between Michigan State University and Spelman College to diversify the data science workforce
- An effort led by the University of Oklahoma to build professional development credentialling opportunities for CyberInfrastructure practitioners
CyberAmbassadors training is freely available to everyone, and participants who complete the certificate program are eligible to be trained as volunteer facilitators to bring the program to their own communities.
For more information, visit the program website.