CC* Strategy-Campus: Collaborative Development of CI Plan for Bryn Mawr College

Bryn Mawr College is developing a comprehensive strategic plan for building the research computing infrastructure and services needed to support computational research and teaching across the curriculum. With support from outside consultants with research computing facilitation and cyberinfrastructure expertise, the information technology staff, faculty researchers, and administrative stakeholders are assessing current and emerging research needs, translating them into concrete cyberinfrastructure and service requirements, and developing a plan for meeting those requirements using a combination of national, regional and locally built cyberinfrastructure and services. Building modern research computing and data support services and infrastructure furthers Bryn Mawr College’s long-standing achievements in scientific research and preparing students for graduate study and careers in STEM. These services and infrastructure will provide a more secure and sustainable framework for faculty whose research and teaching already involves big data or high-performance computing. Supporting modern faculty research needs in turn ensure that students gain experience with the computational methods and modern computational ecosystems needed to work in faculty labs and prepare for graduate study and careers in STEM and beyond. Research computing itself is also a growing field with acute staffing needs. Bryn Mawr College has a strong history of developing student employment programs that give students meaningful career-exploration opportunities while providing technical support for faculty and staff, and will use this strategic planning process to explore the feasibility of developing a similar program as part of a research computing and data support model. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.