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Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences will no longer be a sponsor of the Grace Hopper Celebration — one of the world’s largest conferences for women in tech — and the CMD-IT/ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference.
The school cited financial uncertainty in a SEAS-wide email announcing the change earlier this month and said it would no longer be able to cover costs for students who attend the conferences in fall 2025.
SEAS has co-sponsored both conferences for approximately 10 years. Last year, the SEAS Computer Science Diversity Committee funded 45 undergraduates to attend the two conferences. This year, students and student organizations will need to seek alternative funding.
“I thought it was very unfortunate,” Sunny Liu ’27, who attended the Grace Hopper Celebration last year, said about the end of the sponsorship. “You don’t get so many women in one place, especially for a field like computer science.”
A SEAS spokesperson said that these decisions were made based on financial uncertainties. She said the school’s choice to pull back was informed by the fact that Grace Hopper and Tapia had the earliest approaching deadlines for committing to conference co-sponsorships and for student registration.
Liu said, though she understood the school’s rationale, the end of the sponsorship would drastically impact students’ abilities to attend the conferences.
“It makes me sad, because a ticket costs $1,500, which is crazy expensive. And then you also have to pay for flights, hotels, food, etc. And very few undergraduate students have the money or resources to pay for that,” Liu said.
SEAS has not announced changes to funding for students to attend several other conferences, including the Society of Women Engineers Conference, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers Conference, and the National Society of Black Engineers Conference.
Though the sponsorship changes were officially announced in an email to all SEAS affiliates in early May, the information was first shared with leaders of Harvard Women in Computer Science and other SEAS-sponsored clubs during various earlier meetings.
At the meetings and in followup emails, SEAS also told student leaders that the school will prioritize collaborative community grants for student clubs who host joint instead of individual events due to financial pressure. They also asked students to consider what activities are essential to their clubs and to be creative with limited funding.
The changes come at a time when Trump has paused Harvard’s federal funding, and schools across Harvard are watching their finances closely. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which houses SEAS, plans to keep spending flat, pause non-essential capital projects, and halt staff hires for the next academic year.
In the SEAS-wide email about conference funding, Christina Z. Patel, SEAS’ assistant director for advising programs and diversity outreach, wrote that financial uncertainties are putting pressure on all discretionary spending such as travel or professional development for faculty, staff and students alike.
Some student groups — such as Harvard Undergraduate Women in Computer Science — that regularly send attendees to the conferences, are still trying to fundraise and send students to these conferences.
“We’re planning to work as hard as we can with the AnitaB organization” — which hosts the Grace Hopper Celebration — “as well as with our sponsors to try to send members to GHC,” the WiCS presidents wrote to The Crimson.
—Staff writer Xinni (Sunshine) Chen can be reached at sunshine.chen@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @sunshine_cxn.
—Staff writer Danielle J. Im can be reached at danielle.im@thecrimson.com.
