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Conferences and Career Fairs

Conferences and career fairs are great opportunities to learn, network, and seek employment.  

List of Conferences (in CS in particular and in STEM in general)

Most conferences and career fairs take place in Fall, especially in September and October when internships and job opportunities are also posted. For those that do offer scholarships to attend, scholarship applications are usually open in Spring (around March). WiCS hosts a workshop at this time to give instructions on how to score when writing scholarship essays, with insights from distinguished faculty members who have served on the Review Committee for these scholarships.

Tapia Conference

Most diverse tech conference in the country

Sep 13–16, 2023 in Dallas, TX

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Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC)

World’s largest gathering of women technologists

Sep 20-23, 2022 in Orlando, FL (hybrid)

WECode Conference

Largest student-run women in tech conference in the world

Hosted by undergraduate women at Harvard University

Feb 19-20, 2022 (virtual) - date for 2023 conference will be updated soon

WiCyS Conference

The only flagship conference for women in cybersecurity

Largest cybersecurity conference with equal representation of professionals and students, regardless of gender

Mar 16-18, 2023 in Denver, CO

AfroTech Conference

Largest multicultural tech gathering in the US

Nov 13-17, 2022 in Austin, TX

Great Minds
in STEM (GMiS) 
Conference

Aimed at providing STEM students the resources they need and STEM professionals the accolades they deserve

Oct 5-8, 2022 in Pasadena, CA

Other conferences:

Scholarships and funding to attend conferences

Most conferences offer a limited number of scholarships for students and faculty to attend, and these scholarships vary in amount as well as categories that they can cover. For example, the Tapia Scholarship covers registration fee, hotel stay, travel, and meals, while the Grace Hopper Scholarship now only covers the virtual component of the conference. If you have missed the deadline to apply for a scholarship from a conference or if you applied but unfortunately didn't get it, there are external sources that provide financial assistance with registration fees for those conferences as well. Some of the most well-known sources are Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Goldman Sachs (links are not available until applications open). Moreover, you can ask representatives from organizations such as CodePath, Rewriting the Code, etc. to see if they can help cover the fees or if they know of any company sponsors that can help. Last but not least, the Hubbard Center at DePauw offers a Student Professional Development Fund of $500 which can be used to cover (part of) the registration fees for conferences (apply here). You can also ask your advisor or any CS professor at DePauw to see if the CS Department at DePauw can help.

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TL;DR:

> from the conferences themselves (go to their websites)

> from companies: Google, Microsoft, etc.

> from organizations: CodePath, Rewriting the Code, etc.

> from DePauw: Hubbard Center's Student Professional Development Fund, CS Department

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WiCS organizes a workshop in Spring where we invite our faculty advisors who have served on the review committee for the scholarship applications from conferences such as Tapia or Grace Hopper. These guest speakers together with our members who have won scholarships from theses conferences in the past will share criteria as well as tips for writing application essays to help you score. You will have a chance to ask any questions about application timeline, writing essays, important points to mention, etc., so stay tuned :)

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