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Funding & Fellowships

Student Community Building Funds

Budget: $25,000/annually

Purpose & Criteria

This is an annual budget to support activities and programs that bring students together. Activities utilizing these funds must meet the following criteria:

  • Open to all Allen School Ph.D. students regardless of race, sex, or other identity.
  • Advertised on cs-grads at least 2-3 days in advance of the event
    • Also encouraged to advertise on our internal Slack!
  • Add the event to the Grad Student Calendar
  • Research labs are also permitted to request funds, though the event should still be open to the general grad student community per the criteria above.
  • Research areas/labs are limited to one hosted lunch per month (e.g., “Research area and friends!”)
  • Shared student offices may submit requests.

Process

Allen School students who wish to lead an event can request funds via the Ph.D. Student Community Building Funds Request form. Individual students can request funds for one-off activities or approval of an ongoing program. Students should receive approval first before advertising the event. This funding may help supplement existing faculty or student funding. Once approved for funding, the event organizer will receive a confirmation email from the Director of Graduate Student Services (Elise Dorough, elised@cs) and/or the Ph.D. Program Adviser (Joe Eckert, jeckert1@cs).

March 27, 2025: Following a pause on community building funds, new guidelines were introduced:

  • All events have a hard reimbursement cap of $300 or $10/person, whichever is the lesser of the two values.
  • All events must occur on-campus. We recognize that building community on-campus adds to our educational mission and we want to continue to enable community building while being wise stewards of the remaining budget.
  • IMA Teams may continue being formed; the cost of the IMLeagues membership will be reimbursed. No further funding for food is available.

Other events may still occur assuming the limitations on cost and location above are met. Please note that funds are limited at this point and not every event will receive approval.

For all requests, the following information is required:

  • Organizational lead/contact
  • Activity name/description
  • Expected attendance
  • Approximate budget per attendee

Some GSV event coordinators receive pre-approval to use these funds for events with a regular cadence. For more information, contact Joe Eckert (jeckert1@cs) directly.

Guidelines for Room Reservations

Please review the Room Reservation matrix (Gates) (Allen) to determine and secure the best room for your activity.  Keep in mind that not all rooms are available for non-research related activities — use the “Additional Notes” column to determine if there are restrictions on room reservations.

If you need assistance finding the appropriate room for your event, please email operations@cs.

Reimbursement & Budget Tracking

To be reimbursed for your expenditure, please do the following:

  • Create a new Google Drive folder and share it with jeckert1@cs and cheund@cs
<First & last name of person who paid> - <vendor> - <date of event as MM-DD-YY>.pdf
e.g., "Joe Eckert - Guanaco’s Tacos - 01-04-22.pdf"

Reminder: Only the person who paid for the item(s) can be reimbursed.

  • Save each receipt separately as a PDF in the folder, following this naming convention:
  • Send an email to Joe Eckert (jeckert1@cs) and include the following information:
    • Name & CSEID of person who paid
    • A link to the folder with the itemized receipt(s), showing payment details
    • List of all event attendees
    • Date of event

Some places on campus may also have activities: