The Stewardship Group is the UC OSPO Network’s leadership body: one or two stewards from each member institution, looking after the network’s long-term health, budget, strategy and vision. Bylaws-level decisions are made here. Our governance structure is described in the governance documentation.
The group met for the first time under the new governance structure on Monday, September 21, 2026, and much of the session was dedicated to welcoming two new member institutions: UCSF, whose Scientific Software Core has been running for about a year, and UC Law SF, whose LexLab is at an earlier stage. They join established campus OSPOs at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and UC Santa Cruz. Delegates from the Alignment Group also attended.
The bulk of the meeting was spent on what it takes to stand up an OSPO, with each established campus describing how theirs came about and the new members describing what they’re facing now. A few themes came up repeatedly:
Libraries, research offices and engineering schools each bring different reach, and the answer to the question of where to house a campus OSPO often depends on who the current campus champion is rather than on an org chart
Student engagement tends to come more easily than engagement with faculty and researchers
Researchers and project maintainers are often wary of working with tech transfer and appreciate the OSPO as sort of a translation layer, helping them to get their duckies in a row before going to tech transfer, and tech transfer needs to be confident in its relationship with the OSPO, not feel like the OSPO is cutting tech transfer out of the picture
Funding and help approaching campus leadership are the biggest asks for new members
The group also received an orientation to the network’s governance, heard updates on outreach to the remaining UC campuses, and looked ahead to the autumn’s events.
Decisions¶
Meeting format: September and October keep the same monthly slot and 90-minute length, and the group will reassess after October
Attendance: Stewardship meetings are invite-only: the leads identified by each member institution, plus their alternates. Any representative may invite a guest for a specific topic.
Minutes: after each meeting the group publishes a short summary and its key decisions. Full notes stay private and the Chatham House Rule applies.
Co-chairs: the decision is deferred to October, or sooner asynchronously, so the new member institutions can first decide how involved they want to be
Decision-making: how the group makes decisions will be settled over the next month or two, starting from the Discovery Working Group’s existing framework. Each member institution has one vote, however many representatives attend.
Campus outreach: updates on outreach become a standing item on every agenda
The next meeting is Monday, October 19, 2026.