A Reason to be at HMC

Devon Tao ’25 didn’t want to be class president during their junior year. Tao ran, hoping it would inspire others to run and that someone, not Tao, would win. But with no opposition, Tao won in a landslide and decided to make the best of the new challenge. “I did a bunch of crazy things,” Tao says. “I had a class event every single week. I did a lot of meet and greets, a lot of watching Everything Everywhere All at Once, my favorite movie. The craziest thing I did was to spend $400, which was two-thirds of our class budget, to hire a mime. It was the most-attended class event I’ve ever seen.”

Everything, everywhere, all at once is a good way to describe Tao’s overall Harvey Mudd College experience. Tao has applied their limitless creativity, energy, quirky sense of humor and community-building instincts across the 5Cs. In addition to serving as class president, they’ve been a computer science grutor and student ambassador and founded 7C Ace and Aro Space, an affinity group for asexual and aromantic students.

Academically, Tao, a CS and mathematics major, co-authored and presented research at national conferences with CS professor Lucas Bang, completed an independent study with CS professor Ben Wiederman to develop an online video-based programming languages course and regularly contributed to their YouTube channel, CS Professor of Fun. In their final semester, with support from HSA professors Darryl Wright (philosophy) and Bill Alves (music) and Jill Knox (theater, Pomona College), they produced and performed Reason to Be, an original musical that they began writing as a sophomore.

The musical’s message resonates deeply with Tao’s own questions about purpose and the intersection of creativity and science. “It deals with the idea of value: what we value as a society, what types of work are valued, compensated and not,” Tao says. “The heart of the story is really about the meaning of hope and the meaning of music in the face of these extreme challenges. Theater really is about people, and, on a larger scale, if we’re going to get through this climate situation, it’s going to be all about people.”

“It’s very important to me that I do something good in the world.”

Devon Tao ’25

The tight-knit community coupled with the STEM and liberal arts focus at Harvey Mudd have provided a supportive environment for Tao, who is thinking a lot about how to build a career that combines a passion for music with a passion for teaching and also pays the bills.

“It’s very important to me that I do something good in the world,” says Tao, the recipient of the 2025 Dorman Student Altruism Prize, which they were given, in part, for embodying “Harvey Mudd’s values of leadership, collaboration and social responsibility” and for having “shaped a more inclusive, compassionate and resilient community at Mudd.”

“I think about the idea of understanding the impact of my work on society all the time,” Tao says. “I do a lot of valuable work that is impactful, but it does not compensate at all. And the kind of research that I want to do is a combination of human computer interaction and CS or math education research. I want to make software that helps people learn.” After graduation, Tao will embark on a PhD program in data science at UC San Diego.

“With my skillset and the Mudd degree, I could maybe have an easier life being a software engineer instead of being an artist and a teacher,” Tao says. “But I think, in the end, I need to be true to myself and to my values. I don’t think about specifically how I use science to impact the public. I just think of myself as a person that has all these aspects. But I know that being an artist makes me a better scientist, and being a scientist makes me a better artist.”