Campus Champions: Building and sustaining a thriving community of practice around research computing and data

The digital research landscape has changed dramatically over the years, as campuses across the nation have gained access to local research computing resources and services. The Campus Champions program, [1] founded in 2008, has also evolved with these changes to accommodate and support the diversity and growth of the research computing community that we have long supported. Our mission, to promote and facilitate the effective participation of a diverse national community of institutions in the application of advanced digital resources and services to accelerate scientific discovery and scholarly achievement, has been made possible by sustained funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) via the eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) [2] over the past ten years, and has enabled the Campus Champions program to support campus cyberinfrastructure and to foster a thriving community of practice [3] with nationwide impact. To facilitate the continued growth and sustainability of the Campus Champions program beyond XSEDE, and to provide a deeper understanding of the Champion culture and needs, the Champions Sustainability Working Group and the XSEDE Evaluation team conducted a climate study in 2018. The recommendations provided by the climate study will inform our Leadership Team and staff on how we may further our community outreach goals and plan for the future of the program. This paper will highlight and discuss the development, implementation, key findings, and recommendations from that study.