Midwest RCD Consortium fully and wholeheartedly embraces diversity. This includes but is not limited to embracing: race, ethnicity, color, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, socioeconomic class, religion, disability, age, military status, political ideology, visa status, economic status, geographic location, and language/linguistic ability. We are committed to inclusion where everyone is welcomed, valued, and provided opportunities to grow.
Regional stakeholders working collectively in a trusted forum can shape the future by working collectively on topics of mutual interest, by onboarding organizations that find value in the mission of the organization, by sharing information transparently, and by providing opportunities for CI professional staff members in our organization to contribute, to be mentored, to belong to a cohort, and to become leaders. While identity is a social process and all forms of identity can be fluid, regional identity has been implicit in geography for a long time. Regional identity indicates cohesiveness or social integration within a geographic region and has been said to originate in a harmony or unity between a region and its inhabitants. One’s identity as a member of a region can contribute to greater forms of communication, willingness to share, and trust as there is a shared sense of place amongst members. The strong regional identity of academic institutions in the United States’ Midwest states, and through place-based identity, achieve greater forms of transparency and shared mission in support of the cyberinfrastructure professional.
In attempting to define the regional bounds of the proposed organization, we used the rule of thumb of “one day driving distance” because being able to drive rather than fly to an activity is an important determinant in engagement with regional activities. As the US Census Bureau definition of the Midwestern United States stretches from North Dakota to Ohio (a 21 hour trip from outer ends of each state), the US Census Bureau region is too large. We thus define our regional focus to match what NOAA calls the Great Lakes region (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.)
The technical focus of our proposed consortium is on data. Data plays an ever larger role in computational science. Artificial intelligence, edge networks, computational analysis on data with sensitivities are among just a small number of issues that are relevant and present in present-day scientific and scholarly research. Traditional HPC centers have a compute-first view of serving research, and that model is increasingly being called on for expansion. The MW-RCD consortium’s existence is to support regional conversations of relevance in this space, and arm cyberinfrastructure professionals with tools to address the many emerging issues in this space.
The socio-technical aims of the consortium are to grow and serve the regional CIP community through a lightweight consortium (minimal viable consortium) that can efficiently build resource capacity so as to enable the effectiveness of network participants; and can operate with transparency and inclusivity to allow for growth in the network while offering clear and continued value. It will accomplish this by: 1) establishing a revised governance model (of the earlier MWRC) to more effectively serve the network; 2) expanding participation opportunities by developing an inclusive outreach and communication plan, and 3) building a shareable framework for sustainability including creating an understanding of the value and impact of research computing as well as policies surrounding technical areas of interest.
The beneficiaries of the consortium are: 1) institutions through institutional change brought about through the products and associations of the Midwest RCD, 2) the Midwest RCD organization itself in its ability to benefit consortium members in the work that they do (through topical areas that are investigated through means of short lived affinity groups.) 3) And finally, the individual themself through efforts directly focused on the growth and mentoring of the CI professional and of diverse students who benefit through professional development and pipeline growth.