UW-Madison Carpentries Community

A group of people attending the 2023 Carpentries Kickoff.

Help teach data science workshops.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has a long-standing relationship with the Carpentries, a global organization of researchers who volunteer their time and effort to create workshops that teach software engineering and data analysis skills to other researchers. The local community of workshop instructors, helpers, and lesson developers includes research support staff from across campus, faculty members, and graduate students.

The UW-Madison Data Science Hub and the Carpentries partner to offer data and software training for researchers.  The Carpentries core values of teaching skills to empower researchers, building community, and constantly learning from each other reflects the Data Science Hub’s mission of engaging community and creating learning opportunities to strengthen researchers’ computational skills.

Carpentries & The UW

The Carpentries' logoThe UW-Madison Data Science Hub and the Carpentries partner to offer data and software training for researchers.  The Carpentries core values of teaching skills to empower researchers, building community, and constantly learning from each other reflects the Data Science Hub’s mission of engaging community and creating learning opportunities to strengthen researchers’ computational skills.

Since January 2019, the Data Science Hub has been carrying on the tradition of hosting these workshops on the UW-Madison campus that the Advanced Computing Initiative started in April 2013. Research Computing Facilitators from the Center for High Throughput Computing have also been key in developing the Carpentries community at UW-Madison. See the workshop archive for a complete list of past workshops.

Local Community Activities

  • Teach 10+ Carpentries or Carpentries-style workshops every year
  • Host monthly instructor development meetings
  • Train new instructors 1-2x per year
  • Develop new lesson material

Diversifying & Expanding Curricula

We are committed to creating new data and software trainings from diverse fields/topics. UW-Madison contributes to new Carpentries lessons that appeal to researchers in a variety of disciplines, including those who work with health science data, geospatial data, and digital humanists. See the workshop webpage for information on existing and upcoming UW-Madison Carpentries workshops.

Workshops

Want to Teach or Help? Join the Community

Are you curious about teaching computational skills to researchers? Did you struggle to learn programming and data best practices and want to help others learn those skills? Join the Carpentries Instructional Community to advance your teaching and technical skills while helping others!

As a UW Carpentries community member you can help or teach at Data Science Hub (and other campus partners) workshops. 

We don’t require instructors be Carpentries-certified, and we offer Instructor Training twice a year for interested individuals to earn the certification, prioritizing those who have helped or taught at past workshops.  However, we do require instructors to have helped at a prior workshop.

Join The Carpentries

To join the UW Carpentries Google Group and get involved in the community, click the button below. Please note that you need to be signed in to a Google account in order to see a “Join group” button after being redirected to the Google groups webpage.

Join the UW Carpentries Google Group

Want to become a certified instructor?

Note: You don’t have to be certified to help or teach in the local UW-Madison community. Email facilitator@datascience.wisc.edu with questions about Instructor Certification or Training.

Apply for Instructor Training

Have questions about how to get involved?

Please see the FAQ page for answers to frequently asked questions on how you can get involved with the Carpentries community and its volunteer-led workshops. If you have any additional questions, please reach out to facilitator@datascience.wisc.edu.

FAQ Page