Swarthmore College is hosting the 3rd conference on "Research Computing at Smaller Institutions" (RCSI), June 16-17, 2026. We welcome anyone interested to attend, though content primarily will target the needs and concerns of non-R1 institutions. This event continues the evolution of prior conferences on "High-Performance Computing at Liberal Arts Institutions" held in 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2020.

Academic work in a variety of fields is increasingly reliant on computational analysis, and researchers, faculty, and students at institutions of all scales are looking for ways to gain access to, and effectively leverage, research and high-performance computing (HPC) resources to advance their research, pedagogical, and vocational opportunities.

The ongoing premise of RCSI is the acknowledgment that:

smaller schools increasingly confront identical technical challenges related to research computing that larger institutions do, such as data storage, reproducible (and ever-more complex) workflows, collaboration, user and environment management, etc.;
smaller institutions must face such challenges without resource levels (e.g., money, time, FTE, expertise, infrastructure, and so on) available to larger institutions; and,
an open discussion of research computing challenges faced by our community of smaller institutions can foster new and beneficial ideas, opportunities and collaborations.

While significant progress has been made towards democratizing access to a rich set of resources beyond R1 and similar institutions, much work remains. We invite anyone from ITS, Libraries, and any affiliated programs, departments, and staff involved with research computing support to join us for two full days to discuss these issues, to exchange ideas, and to learn from one another.