PAGE
6
20
FORTUNE.COM // SEPTEMBER 2019
AFTER NINE-TIME Olym-
pic medalist Allyson
Felix gave birth to her
daughter via emer-
gency C-section in
November, the track-
and-field star tried
to negotiate with her
sponsor Nike to avoid
being penalized if her
performance slipped
while she recovered.
Talks stalled—and
Felix parted with Nike.
Eight months later,
Felix donned apparel
by Athleta to compete
at the USA Track &
Field nationals—a first
for the Gap Inc. brand.Athleta and sister brand Intermix were
responsible for about $1.1 billion of Gap
Inc.’s $16.6 billion in revenue in 2018 and
are bright spots in a portfolio of laggard
brands like Gap and Banana Republic.
Athleta was happy to provide “100%
protection” for all future pregnancies andcover travel to com-
petitions for Felix’s
daughter, Camryn; the
financial terms of the
deal weren’t disclosed.
Nike, for one, has since
said it will no longer
penalize pregnant ath-
letes, and Felix hopes
her deal will encourage
other sponsors to up
their game: “We’re
flipping what we think
sponsorship looks like
for women.”
—EMMA HINCHLIFFEGAP INC.
GETS SERIOUS
ABOUT
ATHLETICS—
AND
WOMEN
Allyson Felix went
public with her
Nike dispute.IVIES TRADITIONALISTS MAY LOOK aghast at CS50,
Harvard’s introductory computer science
course, which last year became the school’s most
popular course of any kind. It’s taught by a young
professor in jeans and a black T-shirt, David Malan,
whose lectures are highly polished, fast-paced perfor-
mances filled with props, demonstrations, and student
involvement. Students aren’t required to attend,
though; lectures are recorded in a slick, multi-camera
able for in-person
assistance 10 hours
a week, far more
than in traditional
courses. “There’s so
much support,” says
Emily Schussheim, a
Yale junior who took
CS50 as a freshman.
“It’s also really social.”
Other students have
called it a phenom-
enon, a spectacle, a
cult, and a lifestyle.
CS50 is available
for free on the EdX
education platform,
where it has been tak-
en by over a million
students. Schussheim
tells Fortune she came
to college planning to
major in economics,
with “no real inten-
tions” of ever taking
a computer science
course. Now her
major is computer
science and econom-
ics, and this fall she’s
a teaching assistant
in CS50.format with produc-
tion values that rival
commercial TV, and
most students watch
them online. In
addition to being
Harvard’s No. 1
course, it’s offered
simultaneously at
Yale, with Malan
teaching, an arrange-
ment apparently
unprecedented in the
rival schools’ 318-year
coexistence.
But far from being
a dumbed-down sop
to spoiled students,
CS50 is a carefully
crafted model of how
to teach any subject in
today’s technological
and social environ-
ment. It’s extraordi-
narily demanding; by
mid-semester, most
students are spend-
ing over 12 hours a
week on problem sets.
If they need help,
dozens of teaching
assistants are avail-A Crimson
Phenomenon
Harvard’s introduction to computer science has
become more than a class. By Geoff Colvin