In the Q1 update, we mentioned that we were working with Yale to help seed the Georgetown group. As a result of the fellowship, 7 of the 14 fellows from Georgetown are keen to get involved in organizing a group, and the current co-organizer is participating in one of the summer programs mentioned above.
The Q1 update mentioned:
We worked with Yale EA to run a virtual Introductory Fellowship at Georgetown—one of the most important universities without any EA group. We sourced potential leads from local community members, 80,000 Hours, and CEA’s internal records. A professor we reached out to advertised it to his class, which resulted in around 5 new signups right before the deadline. 15 students at Georgetown are participating, and 10 have expressed interest in helping to grow the group, including the former student body president. 3 Introductory Fellowship participants have expressed interest in leading the group.
That’s exciting! It seems very promising that getting just 15 signups for a virtual Intro EA Program was able to lead to the development of a new group. To what extent have there been efforts to seed groups at other universities besides Georgetown? Have they been successful?
We’ve primarily been responding to the existing demand of group leaders running university groups, as opposed to seeding groups from scratch and we are prioritizing particularly scalable programs right now instead of bespoke support (as we wrote about in the “MVP University Group Program” in our Q3 update). There is significant existing demand for supporting new group organizers and we want to be sure to make the pathway smooth and simple for interested and prepared university groups. We expect to support the start-up stages of ~20 new university groups this semester.
Also, the Georgetown model described above relied heavily on students being able to join a virtual fellowship, which was more appealing during the pandemic when all things were virtual. However, our broad uni groups support team is evaluating opportunities to seed groups as a potential activity (and comparing the benefits per staff hour of seeding groups vs. supporting existing uni groups).
I know of one group outside of CEA that’s experimenting with remotely trying to seed groups through promoting EA Virtual Programs through targeted advertising. If that’s successful we’ll consider incorporating it into our programs
The Q1 update mentioned:
That’s exciting! It seems very promising that getting just 15 signups for a virtual Intro EA Program was able to lead to the development of a new group. To what extent have there been efforts to seed groups at other universities besides Georgetown? Have they been successful?
Hi Michael,
We’ve primarily been responding to the existing demand of group leaders running university groups, as opposed to seeding groups from scratch and we are prioritizing particularly scalable programs right now instead of bespoke support (as we wrote about in the “MVP University Group Program” in our Q3 update). There is significant existing demand for supporting new group organizers and we want to be sure to make the pathway smooth and simple for interested and prepared university groups. We expect to support the start-up stages of ~20 new university groups this semester.
Also, the Georgetown model described above relied heavily on students being able to join a virtual fellowship, which was more appealing during the pandemic when all things were virtual. However, our broad uni groups support team is evaluating opportunities to seed groups as a potential activity (and comparing the benefits per staff hour of seeding groups vs. supporting existing uni groups).
I know of one group outside of CEA that’s experimenting with remotely trying to seed groups through promoting EA Virtual Programs through targeted advertising. If that’s successful we’ll consider incorporating it into our programs