‘A Marathon, Not a Sprint’: Faculty Launch App to Promote Physical Activity

A group of Harvard faculty and administrators led by Human Evolutionary Biology department chair Daniel E. Lieberman ’86 launched CrimsonZip — a new app designed to connect Harvard affiliates to opportunities for physical and social activities — last month.

The app provides a platform for affiliates to join social and athletic groups across campus, consolidating information on events and activities ranging from intramural sports to movie nights.

In an interview, Lieberman said he developed the concept of CrimsonZip during the Covid-19 pandemic. Lieberman said he hoped that the app would help streamline the many channels of communication organizations use to reach students.

“People at Harvard sometimes have a hard time figuring out what opportunities are available,” he said. “The idea was to create an app that would be for the entire Harvard community — undergraduates, faculty, staff — to make it as easy as possible and as fun as possible for people to do anything from walking to participating in intramural sports.”

Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology professor Richard T. Lee ’79, who serves as a co-chair of CrimsonZip alongside Lieberman and Harvard University Health Services Director Giang T. Nguyen, said the app was designed to help students and affiliates build a little more physical activity into their routines.

“We realized that the vast majority of people are so busy in their lives that they’re in that part of that physical activity curve that if they just give 10 percent more, that they would get a really substantial health benefit,” Lee said.

The app allows users to join groups based on Harvard affiliation or personal interest. Currently there are 146 members in the undergraduate group, roughly 2 percent of the undergraduate student body.

Some student leaders, however, said CrimsonZip was unlikely to replace existing forms of communication with students, such as House email lists and other social media platforms.

Malachi C. Miller ’27, an Adams House intramural sports representative, said it has been difficult to get IM participants in Adams to adopt the app.

“People are always texting, like, ‘When are the games?’ But if they had the app, I guess they could just open the app,” Miller said. “I’ve told people to download it, but I only told them to download it once, and I know they didn’t.”

Ethan J. Hooper ’25 — an intramural sports commissioner who provided feedback on the app during late development — said “Houses already have an institutionalized way of doing things, so we want to give people another tool but not mandate it.”

Several House Committee members said they would likely stick to their established modes of communication.

“We most care about people within the House listening, and I can’t imagine it getting more directed than the email lists and Instagram,” Leverett House Committee Co-Chair Carly Y. Chen ’26 wrote in an email.

William Goodman, a postdoctoral researcher in Human and Evolutionary Biology and a CrimsonZip committee member, said that a forthcoming update to the app will allow users to post events across other platforms, including text, email, GroupMe, and Facebook.

Lieberman said the committee will continue to solicit feedback and improve the app in the coming months.

“This is going to be a marathon, not a sprint, right?” Lieberman said. “We’re hoping it will eventually grow and, of course, we’re going to continue to work on the app and modify it.”

“So this is not a one-and-done kind of thing. This is a work in progress,” he added.