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This research-to-practice full paper describes a cohort-based undergraduate research program designed to improve STEM retention through structured mentoring and community building. Drawing on the Affinity Research Group (ARG) model, the program fosters faculty-student research collaboration and integrates faculty mentorship training, student-led peer mentoring, and structured interventions, such as research skills workshops and networking events. Each year, faculty from biology, chemistry, computer science, environmental science, and mathematics lead small-group research projects with recruited students who may participate for up to three years. Faculty and students receive ARG training to promote consistent mentoring practices. A credit-bearing, major-specific first-year orientation course supports recruitment and reinforces students’ scientific identity. Faculty also engage in professional development workshops to strengthen student-centered mentoring approaches. Data collection includes surveys, interviews, retention tracking, and weekly journaling to assess STEM identity, belonging, and skill development. External evaluators reviewed the faculty focus groups to assess mentoring effectiveness. Initial findings show strong faculty engagement with the ARG model, with many adopting adaptive mentoring strategies that enhance student support. Students report increased confidence and belonging within their disciplines. However, cross-disciplinary collaboration remains limited, highlighting the need for more intentional networking within the cohort. Students also emphasized the value of peer collaboration alongside faculty mentorship. These results suggest that undergraduate research can serve as a powerful tool for building community and supporting persistence in STEM. Ongoing efforts will focus on expanding networking opportunities, strengthening peer collaboration, and evaluating long-term impacts on student retention. 

HPC-ED is working to improve discovery and sharing of CyberTraining resources through the combination of the HPC-ED CyberTraining Catalog, an effective and flexible interface, thoughtful metadata design, and active community participation. HPC-ED encourages authors to share training resource information while retaining ownership and allows organizations to enrich their local portals with shared materials. By basing the architecture on an established, flexible framework, HPC-ED can provide a range of solutions people and organizations can employ for sharing and discovering materials. In this paper we describe the initial pilot phase of the project, where we prototyped the HPC-ED catalog, established an initial metadata set, provided documentation, and began using the system to share and discover materials. We gathered community feedback through a variety of means, and are now planning an implementation phase based on evolving our architecture and tools to meet community needs and feedback through improved interfaces and tools designed to address a range of preferences. 

To improve the sharing and discovery of CyberTraining materi- als, the HPC-ED Pilot project team is building a platform for the community to better share and find training materials through a federated catalog. The platform, currently in early test mode, is fo- cused on a flexible platform, informative metadata, and community participation. By creating a framework for identifying, sharing, and including content broadly, HPC-ED will: allow providers of training materials to reach new groups of learners; extend the breadth and depth of training materials; and enable local sites to add or extend local portals. 

Throughout the cyberinfrastructure community there are a large range of resources available to train faculty and young scholars about successful utilization of computational resources for research. The challenge that the community faces is that training materi- als abound, but they can be difficult to find, and often have little information about the quality or relevance of offerings. Building on existing software technology, we propose to build a way for the community to better share and find training and education materials through a federated training repository. In this scenario, organizations and authors retain physical and legal ownership of their materials by sharing only catalog information, organizations can refine local portals to use the best and most appropriate ma- terials from both local and remote sources, and learners can take advantage of materials that are reviewed and described more clearly. In this paper, we introduce the HPC ED pilot project, a federated training repository that is designed to allow resource providers, campus portals, schools, and other institutions to both incorporate training from multiple sources into their own familiar interfaces and to publish their local training materials. 

We have developed a series of course-based undergraduate research experiences for students integrated into course curriculum centered around the use of 3D visualization and virtual reality for science visualization. One project involves the creation and use of a volumetric renderer for hyperstack images, paired with a biology project in confocal microscopy. Students have worked to develop and test VR enabled tools for confocal microscopy visualization across headset based and CAVE based VR platforms. Two applications of the tool are presented: a rendering of Drosophila primordial germ cells coupled with automated detection and counting, and a database in development of 3D renderings of pollen grains. Another project involves the development and testing of point cloud renderers. Student work has focused on performance testing and enhancement across a range of 2D and 3D hardware, including native Quest apps. Through the process of developing these tools, students are introduced to scientific visualization concepts, while gaining practical experience with programming, software engineering, graphics, shader programming, and cross-platform design.