Community Engagement

Kaija Gahm
2022-07-19

I’ve been “community taught” in R and data science. My blog is one attempt to give back by writing resources that others might find useful. But I also contribute to the R, data science, and EEB communities in other ways.

R4DS Slack Workspace

Mentor | October 2021 - Present

As a mentor, I hold office hours weekly, where I answer people’s questions about R. In my responses, I do my best to foster a welcoming environment, talk people through how to create minimal reproducible examples, and use motivating language. It’s important to me to contribute to the welcoming R community that I encountered when I first started learning.

Join the Slack workspace here.


UCLA EEB Hacky Hours

Organizing Committee | January 2022 - Present

Contributor | September - December 2021

Each week, a group of UCLA grad students, mostly from the EEB department, gathers to discuss coding challenges, provide a supportive workspace, and teach each other new tricks. I’m part of the organizing team at Hacky Hours, so I mentor students who show up to the co-working space and help organize mini-workshops for the participants.


The Carpentries

Certified Instructor | June 2021 - Present

I became a certified Carpentries Instructor in summer 2021. I taught a modified Data Carpentry workshop at the 2021 SORTEE conference, which focused on using Git/GitHub through RStudio.

In April, I taught a Software Carpentry workshop for our department in April, focusing on the Version Control with Git section.

Upcoming workshops:

Introduction to R (UCLA Carpentries Summer Workshops), 2022-06-23

Version Control with Git (2022 SORTEE conference), 2022-07-13


SORTEE (Society for Open, Reliable, and Transparent Ecology & Evolutionary Biology)

Board of Directors | January 2022 - Present

Membership Committee | November 2020 - December 2021

On the Board of Directors, I’ve been involved in getting our membership database up and running, as well as guiding the organization into its second year of existence. On the Membership Committee, I’m in charge of getting to know our current members and recruiting others.

More info about SORTEE here.


RStudio Community

Contributor | July 2020 - Present

When I got started with R, I found RStudio Community to be a much more welcoming forum for asking questions than StackOverflow. When I have the time, I contribute to answering questions in RStudio Community, as thanks for all the help I’ve received there. Here is my activity on the site.

Corrections

If you see mistakes or want to suggest changes, please create an issue on the source repository.