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  1. Overview

Conference Support Program

To support SCI’s mission of enhancing student success, we are launching a program to support undergraduate and master’s students to participate in academic and professional conferences. The goals of this program are:

  • Providing networking and career development opportunities to undergraduate and masters’ students.
  • Offering research development opportunities to undergraduate and master’s students.
  • Supporting networking, community development, and cohort building among students within SCI and in the broader academic community 

This program will currently focus on domestic conferences and priorities will be given to: 

  1. Students who are in the academic year they expect to graduate
  2. Students who are endorsed by a faculty advisor or their academic advisor
  3. Students are active in students’ group or events organized at SCI
  4. Students who have a presentation at the conference
  5. Conferences organized in Pittsburgh 
  6. Conferences must be aligned with the vision and mission of SCI. Conferences sponsored by a professional academic society relevant to SCI, including ACM, IEEE, ASEE, AnitaB.org, AAAI, ALISE, ASIS&T, or ALA will  be given priority. Additional societies and conferences may be added on an annual basis after a review. Conferences not listed can still be supported, providing the justification by the student or faculty mentor.

While SCI will work hard on satisfying as many requests as possible, travel funds are very limited and not all requests are guaranteed to be supported. 

On campus undergraduate and masters’ students interested in receiving support to attend conferences should follow the process described below to be considered for the conference support:

  1. Submit an application, as soon as the information about the conference is available. Requests submitted in less than 4 weeks before the conference might not be considered.  
  2. Attend pre-conference information sessions, when organized by the school such as the event for Grace Hopper Conference or review the materials provided by SCl, when no information session is organized.
  3. Share post-conference reflection on the conference participation experience. This could be also a write up, a video/audio recording, a presentation, or a story. Reflections should be submitted to Rosta Farzan (rfarzan@pitt.edu) no later than a week after the end of the conference.
  4. Sign the responsibility statement provided by SCI.