Women in CS Alumni Endowment Fund for SFU

UPDATE: We are now at 14K, only 6K left to go!

Last week one of my grad school friends had what I think is an amazing idea: set up a scholarship to support women studying Computing Science at our alma mater, SFU.  Since then I've been reaching out to many people I know from the school and have pledges for ~$12K of the $20K we need to start the fund, which we're tentatively calling the 'Women in CS Alumni Endowment Fund'.

Read on for more details!

Why This Idea Rocks!

This fund will:

• Provide extra support for women studying CS (the obvious one!)
• Show that women from the CS department are successful (role modeling) and that we support women in the pipeline
• Implicitly encourage women to participate in the WICS community

Some Details:

• We plan to set up an endowment fund as defined by the school
• Alumni in the US and Canada can easily donate to this fund as a charity since it qualifies as a 5013c in the US
• The school would take care of administration of the fund and awarding of the scholarship, given qualifying requirements as set by us (details TBA).
• Anyone can contribute to the fund, not just women, not just alumni of CS at SFU, etc.  All friends and supporters are welcome! :-)

Current Status

Since we're still looking for ~$8K more, please contact me ASAP if you would like to support this effort!  

(I can be reached via kjtsouka AT gmail DOTcom.)