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Enable Student-led Hackathons §

Pattern Summary §

Support student hackathon organizers by acting as institutional advocates and managing bureaucratic processes that fall outside their reach.

Problem / Challenge §

Student groups are often highly capable at organizing hackathons. However, organizers may face barriers when engaging with the broader university or external partners in the following areas:

  • Applying for funding.
  • Prior experience of managing events of this scale.
  • Knowledge of how to navigate their university’s administrative teams (e.g. IT, Communications, Finance, Facilities, Student Affairs) to obtain approval, resources and support.
  • Financial structures in place to administer funding from sponsors.
  • Know-how to integrate open source best practices and culture into the event.
  • An official from the university who can advocate on their behalf.

Without proper support, student hackathons may fail to launch, produce limited learning outcomes or inadvertently create problems around intellectual property, code licensing, or project sustainability.

Pattern Category §

  • Community Building
  • Education & Skills
  • Funding & Financial Support
  • Promoting Best Practices
  • Working with Tech Transfer/External Partners

Context §

An institution or a university. An OSPO has been established and has contacts with student groups involved in hackathons. Student organizers have experience of running hackathons.

Forces §

Funding has become available for a hackathon (possibly through external sponsorship). OSPO staff have the time and resources to support student organisers. The student organizers have some level of experience in leading or participating in hackathons.

Solution §

OSPOs should identify organizers' support needs in the following areas:

  • Support with financial and legal processes (e.g. providing a bank account to host funding, support with contracts, guarantees, Memoranda of Understanding).
  • Supporting organizers with logistical support (or signposting key contact points within the institution) for venue booking, catering, IT support and promoting the events.
  • Connecting organizers with other student hackathon groups on campus to share learning.
  • Acting as an institutional advocate for student organizers in their negotiations with external partners. This may involve attending meetings; supporting the organizers’ ideas during negotiations; and providing a wider institutional context.
  • Advocating on behalf of organizers with the university.
  • Attending hackathons and supporting organizers throughout the event.

Resulting Context §

  • Student groups retain full ownership and pride in their events while gaining access to resources and partnerships they couldn't reach alone.
  • The OSPO builds genuine, sustained relationships with student communities and gains visibility and credibility across disciplines.
  • External partners (industry, community open source groups) are assured that the institution has a trusted representative with the experience to support student organizers to fulfill their commitments.

Additional Learning from the George Washington University OSPO §

GeorgeHacks is a student group that runs an annual hackathon. It’s a two day event with approximately 150 participants. They have industry partners and collaborate with them to devise problem statements. This is a very experienced group and we have a really good relationship with the group. (Their lead is on our OSPO Stakeholder Group.)

In 2025, we partnered as sponsors and the theme for the hackathon was based on our suggestion of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. We ran a workshop introducing the UN SDGs. We facilitated an introductory open source workshop and sponsored an open source prize. Teams who made their projects open source and followed explicit guidelines (e.g. sharing on GitHub, adding the correct license etc.) qualified for a $500 spot prize.

We also participated as mentors.

Additional Learning from Carnegie Mellon University OSPO §

We have different students from a variety of disciplines in leadership roles so every student-led hackathon is different. We connect organizers to other student groups to enable information sharing. We’ve also facilitated peer-to-peer leadership training, which has been really valuable.

With external partners, it can be challenging for students to engage with sponsors because of university bureaucracy. We can step in and act as the connection point and we can also look after contracts, guarantees and any MoU.

We’ve found that the big thing that student organizers need is an advocate.

Known Instances §

References §

Contributors & Acknowledgement §

  • Angela Newell, University of Texas at Austin
  • Ciara Flanagan, https://orcid.org/0009-0005-3153-7673
  • David Lippert, George Washington University, https://orcid.org/0009-0003-6444-9595
  • Emily Lovell, University of California Santa Cruz, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5531-5956
  • Laura Langdon, University of California, Davis
  • Tom Hughes, Carnegie Mellon University, https://orcid.org/0009-0008-7516-3687