Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/WITipedia Women in STEM Edit-a-thon 2026 (ID: 23634802)
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Applicant Details
[edit]- Main Wikimedia username. (required)
Ceribrit (talk • accounts • contributions • edit count)
- Organization
Wentworth Institute of Technology
- If you are a group or organization leader, board member, president, executive director, or staff member at any Wikimedia group, affiliate, or Wikimedia Foundation, you are required to self-identify and present all roles. (required)
N/A
- Describe all relevant roles with the name of the group or organization and description of the role. (required)
Main Proposal
[edit]- 1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.
WITipedia Women in STEM Edit-a-thon 2026
- 2. and 3. Proposed start and end dates for the proposal.
2026-01-19 - 2026-05-31
- 4. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
United States of America
- 5. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign, project, or event? If so, please select the relevant project or campaign. (required)
Not applicable
- 6. What is the change you are trying to bring? What are the main challenges or problems you are trying to solve? Describe this change or challenges, as well as main approaches to achieve it. (required)
Challenge we are addressing: We aim to help combat gender bias in STEM. There is a significant article number and quality gap for biography articles about women generally on Wikipedia [source, e.g.: WikiProject Women in Red, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red]. Similarly, there are known gender representation and equity gaps across STEM fields [source, e.g.: American Physical Society, https://www.aps.org/learning-center/statistics/diversity]. Our institution itself, a primarily undergraduate institution with a STEM focus, enrolls approximately 75% men [source: Wentworth Institute of Technology Institutional Effectiveness, https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/institutional.effectiveness6831/viz/WENTWORTHSTUDENTBODYDIVERSITY_16849372203330/StudentBodyDiversity].
Change that is sought: Our approach to this strategy has three parts: (1) improve the quality of biography articles about women in STEM, iterating on editing events held in 2024 and 2025, (2) engage students as editors of Wikipedia and with addressing gender bias in STEM, and (3) foster a community of Wikipedia editors at the Wentworth Institute of Technology
This proposal builds on edit-a-thons funded by a Wikimedia Foundation Rapid Grant in 2025 (https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Wentworth_Institute_of_Technology/WITipedia_Women_in_STEM_Edit-a-thon_(March_17,_2025), https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Programs/Wikimedia_Community_Fund/Rapid_Fund/WITipedia_Women_in_STEM_Edit-a-thon_(ID:_22694205)/Final_Report) and by a one-time grant from the Wentworth Institute of Technology’s Faculty Ambassadors of Inclusive Excellence program in 2024 (https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Wentworth_Institute_of_Technology/SoSH_Women_in_STEM_Wikipedia_Edit-a-thon).
(1) Improve the quality of biography articles about women in STEM, iterating on editing events held in 2024 and 2025 Activities: 1.1 Curate a list of 400 Start- and C-class biography articles about women in STEM for participants in an edit-a-thon to choose from. 1.2 Run an edit-a-thon during which these articles are improved by the addition of sources, improvement of wording and organization, and links to/from them on Wikipedia. Note on iteration: Our previous events focused on stub- and start-class articles. Student feedback from past events indicated that it was sometimes difficult to find new information on these articles. We will maintain a focus on articles in need of the most attention, but are shifting to those that are somewhat more developed to a) increase what students will learn about subjects from their articles at the outset, b) include subjects that on average have more readily available information about them on the internet, and c) enable more edit types such as those related to article organization.
(2) Engage students as editors of Wikipedia and with addressing gender bias in STEM Activities: 2.1 Enlist at least 12 faculty members at the Wentworth Institute of Technology to either build the edit-a-thon into one or more Spring 2026 courses, or to incentivize participation in the edit-a-thon, or to advertise the edit-a-thon to their students directly. 2.2 Train students who attend the edit-a-thon to make edits to Wikipedia and provide them with article choices to work on. Note on iteration: In our 2025 edit-a-thon, participants who completed a pre- and post-event survey indicated a statistically significant increase in their agreement with the statement “I feel engaged in addressing gender bias in STEM” (data from final report linked above). We aim to maintain this benefit and improve student training and implementation of edit-a-thon best practices. In our past edit-a-thons, eight faculty have brought students to the event. Two more have already expressed interest in joining for a future event.
(3) Foster a community of Wikipedia editors at the Wentworth Institute of Technology Activities: 3.1 Teach and engage students in a social edit-a-thon with background music and food. 3.2 Build the visual identity and recognizability of Wikipedia editing at Wentworth by handing out stickers and raffling off mugs with our logo to participants. Note on iteration: In our 2025 edit-a-thon, participants who completed a pre- and post-event survey indicated statistically significant increases in their agreement with the statements “I am familiar with editing Wikipedia” and “I am likely to make at least one edit to Wikipedia in the next year outside of the edit-a-thon” (data from the final report linked above). We note also that a student-designed WITipedia logo was created for the 2025 edit-a-thon and will appear in all event advertising, on all event materials, and in stickers handed out to participants and mugs raffled to participants.
- 7. What are the planned activities? (required) Please provide a list of main activities. You can also add a link to the public page for your project where details about your project can be found. Alternatively, you can upload a timeline document. When the activities include partnerships, include details about your partners and planned partnerships.
January 2026: Beginning the week of January 19, 2026, we will contact Wentworth Institute of Technology faculty and invite them to participate in the edit-a-thon. We will explain the event and provide structure for different levels of involvement (bringing students to the event with and without previous preparation, incentivizing participation with an out-of-class assignment, or advertising the event during class). Faculty participation is particularly effective in bringing in students to participate in the event. In our 2024 and 2025 events, more than 90% of participants were enrolled in at least one class with faculty incentivizing their attendance or advertising the event to them.
We will reserve the event space: the Zorica Pantic Commons of our university’s Center for Engineering, Innovation, and Sciences. There will not be a fee for reserving university space for this event.
We will create an updated event pre/post survey, beginning from that used in our 2025 edit-a-thon. In that survey, students were asked to rate their agreement with these four statements: “I feel engaged in addressing gender bias in STEM,” “I am interested in learning about the work of women in STEM fields,” “I am familiar with editing Wikipedia,” and “I am likely to make at least one edit to Wikipedia in the next year outside of the edit-a-thon.” Before the event, students also had the option to answer “What do you hope to learn during the edit-a-thon?” After the event, students had the option to respond to: “What is one thing that you learned during the edit-a-thon” and “What would you change about the edit-a-thon.” We will ask participating faculty to include survey participation in any assignment related to the edit-a-thon.
January-February 2026: We will assemble the list of articles that will form the basis of our article suggestions. These will be organized by discipline to match learning objectives from some participating courses in, e.g., physics or biology. We aim to assemble 400 C- and Start-class articles, double the number of target participants so that students have options to pursue their interests.
February 2026: Course participation in the event will be finalized and the approximate number of participants joining through different courses at different times will be known, allowing for finalization of the edit-a-thon schedule and staffing needs. We will reach out to students with editing experience about volunteering day-of for the event to staff the event’s sign-in desk and to provide editing assistance to participants. Faculty that have built the edit-a-thon into their syllabus will communicate with our team and the institution’s library to schedule a research training.
Potential student speakers for the event will be nominated by participating faculty and will be students whose stories reflect diverse experiences in STEM and can empower and encourage others.
We will also finalize our keynote speaker for the event in February. The keynote speaker will be a university alumna working in a STEM field in the Boston area. We will work with alumni affairs to identify prospective keynote speakers.
We will contact our institution’s facilities management team to finalize the event set-up, using our 2025 event as a blueprint. I will also contact our event support team to go over our technical needs for the event, which will include microphones and licensed streaming instrumental music during editing.
Catering orders for the event will be placed. Mugs with the WITipedia logo will be ordered at this time for distribution during the event to volunteers and via raffles.
Also during this time, the edit-a-thon will be advertised by flyers throughout the campus and in our university’s newsletter, The W.
Early March 2026: We will finalize the event presentation slides and script. This will include: 1) The event start slides. These will introduce Wikipedia and motivate our focus on articles about women in STEM 2) Introductory slides for our keynote speaker 3) Slides providing an introduction to editing. This will include introducing Wikipedia’s Five Pillars and a live demonstration of pre-planned edits to a biography article about a woman in STEM. Several edits will be planned for use throughout the day highlighting: how to make an edit, how to cite a source, how to create links, and how to create or edit an infobox. 4) Introductory slides for student lightning talk speakers 5) Event wrap-up slides, including presentation of the event dashboard with partial accounting of the event’s contributions 6) Slides for projection during the bulk of the event which will rotate through resources that are available, tips for editing, and an event welcome
Participating faculty and student volunteers who are new or relatively new to editing will have the opportunity to join one of two training events in the week leading up to the edit-a-thon. We will ensure that they have Wikipedia accounts, provide written resources for troubleshooting common account and editing issues (e.g. how to help participants switch to the visual editor), and walk them through common edit types.
Mid-March 2026, before the edit-a-thon: Pre-surveys for student participants will be administered by participating faculty.
Mid-March 2026, the day of the edit-a-thon: The main event of this proposal is an edit-a-thon during March. The final date will be determined by the schedules of participating faculty. Tentative event date: March 18, 2026 Draft schedule: 7am: Event setup begins (tables, chairs, power cords, etc.) 8am-9:45am: Opening presentation (10 minutes) How to edit presentation (10 minutes) Coffee and breakfast items Student lightning talk(s) (10 minutes) 10am-11:45am: How to edit presentation (10 minutes) Student lightning talk(s) (10 minutes) 12:00pm-1:00pm:Pizza Keynote address 1:00pm-2:45pm: Coffee and snacks How to edit presentation (10 minutes) Student lightning talk(s) (10 minutes) 3:00pm-4:45pm: How to edit presentation (10 minutes) Student lightning talk(s) (10 minutes) 4:45pm: Event wrap-up, summary of the day’s contributions 5pm: Event teardown begins (tables, chairs, power cords, etc.)
- The edit-a-thon will incorporate students throughout the day. As students join, they will be directed to create accounts associated with the event Outreach Dashboard and to add notes to their user pages that they are participating in the edit-a-thon with a link to the organizer’s user page, reflecting best practices for engaging students in editing.
Since most participants will be joining with a class, and many of those classes will join during their scheduled meeting, we have structured the day to match typical course timings (usually 1 hour and 45 minute blocks as outlined). Each block will include an introduction to editing and Wikipedia’s norms as well as one to two student lightning talks. During each block, at least one branded WITipedia mug will be raffled to participants.
Day-of support will be provided by participating faculty, student volunteers, university library staff, and staff from the School of Sciences and Humanities.
Mid-March 2026, after the event: Post-surveys and other associated course assignments will be administered by participating faculty.
The keynote speaker’s honorarium will be processed at this time.
Late March to April 2026 The project team will process survey data and separately evaluate edits made during the event. We will aim to address our learning questions (question 17) here. We will be able to compare results from this edit-a-thon to our 2024 and 2025 edit-a-thons, looking at dashboard metrics, survey responses, and the edits themselves. We will also examine whether participants in past events continued to edit Wikipedia after the edit-a-thon and see how it links to relevant survey questions.
April and May 2026 The project team will complete our grant report, including the results of our data analysis and comparison to past events. We will share the event presentation and support materials as well as details of course assignments associated with the event (with faculty permission).
- 8. Describe your team. Please provide their roles, Wikimedia Usernames and other details. (required) Include more details of the team, including their roles, usernames, Wikimedia group, and whether they are salaried, volunteers, consultants/contractors, etc. Team members involved in the grant application need to be aware of their involvement in the project.
Andrew Seredinski (Wikimedia username: Ceribrit), Associate Professor, School of Sciences and Humanities (volunteer on project). Role: Andrew will lead the project, co-organizing the event, recruiting speakers, incentivizing student participation, running the event day-of, and providing editing and technical support.
Faith Litchock-Morellato (Wikimedia username: FLMorellato), Assistant Professor, School of Sciences and Humanities (volunteer on project). Role: Faith teaches English composition with a WikiEdu course that dovetailed with our 2024 and 2025 edit-a-thons and will do the same in 2026. She will bring students to the event and lead writing composition support as well as play a supporting role in organizing the event.
Allison Lange (Wikimedia username: Alange1920), Professor, School of Sciences and Humanities (volunteer on project). Role: Allison is a historian who studies the intersection of gender and power in the United States. She will bring students to the event, provide editing support, and support the organizing of the event.
Kelsey Irvine, Associate Director for Research & Collections, Douglas D. Schumann Library and Learning Commons (volunteer on project). Role: Kelsey is a librarian who will lead research support and training for participants. This will include in-course training sessions ahead of the event for some participating classes as well as day-of research support for all participants.
Nadine Stecher, Assistant Professor, School of Sciences and Humanities (volunteer on project). Role: Nadine will lead the evaluation of the project’s impact on participants and play a supporting role in organizing the event. This role will include developing and distributing pre- and post-surveys to measure student perspectives on the event and perceived learning gains.
- 9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities? (required)
The target participants in this project are the students as well as the faculty, staff, and other community members of the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The event will be run through an outreach dashboard.
We will partner with faculty at the university to incorporate an edit-a-thon into their course, either bringing classes to the event, incentivizing participation with an out-of-class assignment, or advertising the event in class.
Before the edit-a-thon, we will ask students in participating courses to complete a pre-survey related to our learning questions (question 17) and structured beginning with our 2025 edit-a-thon survey. The courses that will engage most significantly with the edit-a-thon will incorporate a research training session led by the university’s library staff ahead of the event and will create accounts ahead of time. Students in some courses taught by project team member Professor Faith Litchock-Morellato will engage in a WikiEdu course throughout the semester.
During the edit-a-thon, students will be given a short orientation on editing and will be provided with on-demand research and editing support. The event will be social, with participants encouraged to collaborate and with food provided throughout the day. Participants will also see at least one talk given by a current student or alumna working in a STEM field.
After the edit-a-thon, we will ask participants to complete a post-survey that will go along with the event pre-survey. As we design this post-survey, we will pay special attention to how students feel their editing connects to their studies and to their identifying as engaged in equity work and as Wikipedians. Many participating courses will include an assignment that will also engage students immediately after the event, prompting reflection on and summarization of their editing and how it connects to their coursework.
Surveys will be implemented through Qualtrics or Microsoft Forms and we will ask that participating faculty require survey completion as part of any edit-a-thon-associated assignment.
- 10. Does your project involve work with children or youth? (required)
No
- 10.1. Please provide a link to your Youth Safety Policy. (required) If the proposal indicates direct contact with children or youth, you are required to outline compliance with international and local laws for working with children and youth, and provide a youth safety policy aligned with these laws. Read more here.
N/A
- 11. How did you discuss the idea of your project with your community members and/or any relevant groups? Please describe steps taken and provide links to any on-wiki community discussion(s) about the proposal. (required) You need to inform the community and/or group, discuss the project with them, and involve them in planning this proposal. You also need to align the activities with other projects happening in the planned area of implementation to ensure collaboration within the community.
We discussed the project with the Dean of the School of Sciences and Humanities at the Wentworth Institute of Technology, who was involved in the 2024 and 2025 iterations of this event that we are building on. The dean’s office has agreed to support the event with staffing.
We formally notified the Wentworth Institute of Technology of this proposal through our Office of Sponsored Research and Grants, providing the project motivation, background, draft schedule, budget, and budget justification.
We continue to work with a team of eight faculty members who supported the 2024 and 2025 incarnations of the event (four of them on the project team under question 8). We will request their repeated participation and advertise the event to other faculty on campus, especially in our School of Computing and Data Science, where faculty in Applied Mathematics have expressed interest in participating after seeing our past edit-a-thons.
- 12. Does your proposal aim to work to bridge any of the content knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Content Gender gap
- 13. Does your proposal include any of these areas or thematic focus? Select one option that most applies to your work. (required)
Gender and diversity
- 14. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Gender Identity
- 15. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select one that most applies. (required)
Evaluate, Iterate, and Adapt
Learning and metrics
[edit]- 17. What do you hope to learn from your work in this project or proposal? (required)
Learning questions: 1. To what extent will participation in editing Wikipedia biographies in an edit-a-thon lead students to identify as engaging in addressing gender bias in STEM and as Wikipedians? 2. What learning gains will students report or demonstrate after editing the biographies of STEM professionals on Wikipedia? 3. What edit types does this academic edit-a-thon structure encourage (e.g. adding new information, organizing existing article information, improving mechanics or tone, adding links to and from other articles) and what supports enable higher quality editing by platform newcomers in this context?
- 18. What are your Wikimedia project targets in numbers (metrics)? (required)
| Other Metrics | Target | Optional description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 200 | |
| Number of editors | 175 | |
| Number of organizers | 25 |
| Wikimedia project | Number of content created or improved |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 150 |
| Wikimedia Commons | |
| Wikidata | |
| Wiktionary | |
| Wikisource | |
| Wikimedia Incubator | |
| Translatewiki | |
| MediaWiki | |
| Wikiquote | |
| Wikivoyage | |
| Wikibooks | |
| Wikiversity | |
| Wikinews | |
| Wikispecies | |
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
- Optional description for content contributions.
N/A
- 19. Do you have any other project targets in numbers (metrics)? (optional)
No
| Main Open Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
- 20. What tools would you use to measure each metrics? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support. (required)
We will use a Programs & Events Dashboard for each target metric other than number of organizers, which we will tally manually.
Financial proposal
[edit]- 21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)
- 22. and 22.1. What is the amount you are requesting for this proposal? Please provide the amount in your local currency. (required)
1725.5 USD
- 22.2. Convert the amount requested into USD using the Oanda converter. This is done only to help you assess the USD equivalent of the requested amount. Your request should be between 500 - 5,000 USD.
1725.5 USD
- By submitting your proposal/funding request you confirm that you have read and agree to the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy, and the Universal Code of Conduct.
Yes
Endorsements and Feedback
[edit]Please add endorsements and feedback to the grant discussion page only. Endorsements added here will be removed automatically.
Community members are invited to share meaningful feedback on the proposal and include reasons why they endorse the proposal. Consider the following:
- Stating why the proposal is important for the communities involved and why they think the strategies chosen will achieve the results that are expected.
- Highlighting any aspects they think are particularly well developed: for instance, the strategies and activities proposed, the levels of community engagement, outreach to underrepresented groups, addressing knowledge gaps, partnerships, the overall budget and learning and evaluation section of the proposal, etc.
- Highlighting if the proposal focuses on any interesting research, learning or innovation, etc. Also if it builds on learning from past proposals developed by the individual or organization, or other Wikimedia communities.
- Analyzing if the proposal is going to contribute in any way to important developments around specific Wikimedia projects or Movement Strategy.
- Analysing if the proposal is coherent in terms of the objectives, strategies, budget, and expected results (metrics).