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National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis

coreR Course

An immersive learning experience applying essential data science tools to environmental research

Let NCEAS kickstart your data and team science skills

coreR takes open science beyond publications — teaching participants about open data, collaborative software, and reproducible analytical workflows. We highlight these technical skills needed to do open science in the ever-evolving data science field. After this five day immersive course, you will be ready to take on your own environmental data science challenges.

Are you ready to take your research to the next level? Register for the next coreR Course below.

This course is taught in partnership with DataONE.

The participants and instructors of our October 2023 coreR course gathered in two rows on the NCEAS patio walkway at the end of their five days of training on R programming, open science, and reproducible data.
The participants and instructors of our October 2023 coreR course gathered in two rows on the NCEAS patio walkway at the end of their five days of training on R programming, open science, and reproducible data.

Course Learning Goals

  • Icon of happy face and code symbol by Gregor Cresnor from the Noun Project

    Increase your confidence in data science

    coreR is more than coding in R - it’s also community-centered learning, so you leave knowing which communities to turn to and what resources to utilize long after the course is over.

  • process icon by Gregor Cresnar from Noun Project (CCBY3.0)

    Implement reproducible scientific workflows

    Effectively manage your data using tidy data practices and develop quality metadata to maximize reproducibility. The results? Seamless publishing and accessing of your data for all.

  • Mobile Development icon by Gregor Cresnar from Noun Project (CCBY3.0)

    Create stunning data visualization and reports

    Better communicate scientific analyses and results using Markdown, GitHub webpages, and R packages like {ggplot} and {leaflet} so your take-aways reach a broad audience.

  • done icon by Gregor Cresnar from Noun Project (CCBY3.0)

    Improve collaboration with team science

    Establish best practices and utilize tools like Git & GitHub, and Data Management Plans to optimize your collaboration. When your team is on the same page, you get to solutions faster.

Camila Vargas-Poulsen and Halina Do-Linh standing together on the NCEAS Terrace
Camila Vargas-Poulsen (left) and Halina Do-Linh (right) are Learning Hub instructors

Meet our Instructors

With their diverse backgrounds and extensive experience doing data science and synthesis science, our instructors bring years of experience in environmental data science, data management, collaboration, and open science to our workshops.

Each training event has two or three trainers in the room at all times. While one instructor leads the lesson, the others help debug errors and answer questions immediately, ensuring no participant is left behind.

Who Should Attend

This opportunity is for researchers and professionals across career stages and sectors who want to gain or advance fundamental data science skills to improve their research techniques, especially for synthesis science. While we welcome all disciplines, we teach this course with an environmental focus and work primarily with environmental data. This course also uses R as the primary programming language. Participants should be familiar with basics of programming in R. If you are unsure of your ability or do not know R and want to learn, please email learning-hub@nceas.ucsb.edu for more information and pre-course preparation recommendations.

* in-person trainings are contingent upon current COVID protocols established by UC Santa Barbara and NCEAS

What participants are saying about core R

  • "This course is great for anyone needing formal training in R and Git Hub. Before this course, I was hesitant to venture into data science, but now I feel way more confident and can officially say I have added incredibly useful skills to my belt."

    coreR October 2023 participant

  • "It is highly informative, not too overwhelming, and extremely useful for a career involving data science."

    coreR October 2023 participant

  • "It's a great way to cement your understanding of the foundations of R if, like me, you have a lot of experience with R. It was also nice to get a single approach to coding…I am very satisfied with what was taught and how it was taught."

    coreR October 2023 participant

  • "This course provided skills that I had to cobble together from the internet for myself over months in grad school in one week!"

    coreR April 2023 participant

  • "Loved this course! The teachers are amazing and this transformed my ability to use R. On Monday morning I had not opened R Studio or Github for 3 years and had been dreading it - now I feel confident wrangling data, making maps, and learning more R!"

    coreR April 2023 participant

  • "I learned so much in a short amount of time, the tools and coursework used were extremely beneficial to the learning outcomes. This course beautifully allows you to learn how to effectively use R and GitHub for any type of research! Highly recommend!"

    coreR April 2023 participant

Funding Opportunity: The Director’s Scholarship

NCEAS is committed to advancing diversity and equity among workshop participants. We recognize the financial barrier that registration and travel costs present and are excited to offer funding opportunities for the coreR Course. 

The scholarship award includes a tuition waiver plus reimbursement for travel, lodging, and per diem for each in-person course. Travel and lodging must be reserved through the NCEAS Travel Coordinator. At this time, we are only able to fund in-person participants who currently reside in the United States. For immediate questions please reach out to us at deij@nceas.ucsb.edu.

The coreR course was very diverse, which is quite a triumph in environmental science and coding, and I think that's a direct result of the Director’s scholarship. It makes a big difference for the experience women of color have while visiting institutions and taking part in courses like this.

Maya Almaraz, 2022 Director’s Scholarship Recipient