The mission of Cool Girls Science and Art Club is to engage young girls in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) so they have the desire, confidence and skills to sustain their contributions to the community throughout their personal, academic and professional journeys.
Cool Girls Science and Art Club is a proud member of the National Girls Collaborative Project.
|
| The Cool Girls Science and Art Club was founded in 2008 by a group of 8-year-olds who love learning about science, technology, engineering, the arts, and math (STEAM).
Each semester the girls in the program decide what they want to learn with the help of mentors.
Cool Girls became a nonprofit in 2010. No child is turned away for financial reasons.
We need your help to keep the program going and to reach other girls. Might you be a Cool Girls supporter by volunteering or making a tax--deductible donation?
Come and enjoy a Mediterranean feast with us on November 5th to learn more. Details are provided in this newsletter.
Become a Cool Friend of Cool Girls today!
Contact to volunteer or learn more about becoming a Cool Girls sponsor. Contact to rsvp for the November 5th feast or send an in-lieu tax-deductible donation. Enjoy our to meet the girls. |
|
|
Dear Cool Friends of Cool Girls,
First, a quick reminder that today, October 29, is Super Science Saturday at NCAR. Click here for the schedule of activities for this free and exciting kids' event featuring cryogenics, snowmastodon artifacts, a safari, puppets, facepainting and numerous experiments of all types.
As you can see below, Cool Girls has several exciting events planned for the next couple of months. We need your help to make them happen.
Cool Girls has so far been an all-volunteer organization with minimal funding, which has both enriched and limited the quality and the quantity of our programs. We need to upgrade our teaching materials to include equipment such as
 | | Cool Girls improvised scenes about the creatures in the Habitat. |
microscopes, binoculars, chemicals, lab supplies, etc., and to raise funds for scholarships, operating expenses and field trips.
As a result, we have begun to solicit donations and look into grants and other types of financial support. The first of these is our November 5th fundraising dinner featuring a fabulous Mediterranean feast. (Details in the article below.)
We are now in our fourth year of offering programs at Crest View Elementary the constant drumbeat of requests to open Cool Girls programs at other schools both within and outside BVSD reflects our popularity. At our August board meeting we dis
cussed implementing a Cool Girls Science and Art Club at another BVSD school in 2011-2012. Watch this space for updates on that.
We know that encouraging young girls to develop and increase their STEM-related skills is essential. They themselves demand it. Even in the United States of the 21st century, large numbers of girls decide that science and math are inappropriate for them by the third grade, a tragedy that increases each year and then takes a huge leap upward in middle school.
This causes several problems:
- They lose out on an exciting opportunity for intellectual development and personal achievement.
- They perpetuate the stereotype that STEM is a boy's game, which results in maintaining the barrier to other girls' participation in classes already that have few girls.
- They discover later that they lack the background for higher math and science classes.
- They limit their options in terms of careers.
- They limit their potential income dramatically.
- Society loses without their participation in important roles that affect the future.
Cool Girls at Crest View has already proved the success of our program, as has the continually increasing demand to expand it. In addition, we have been invited to be the lead organization in building a Colorado Collaborative of the National Girls Collaborative Project. The NGCP is funded principally by the National Science Foundation to provide staff development to organizations attempting to bring more girls into STEM. We have attracted donations for scholarships and now need operating funds.
If you know of any organizations, foundations, corporations, or individuals who might share and support our vision of bringing more girls into STEAM and thus be inclined to fund Cool Girls, please contact me. We need your support as mentors, advisers, and sponsors.
Warmly,
Mary
Mary Golden, Director
Cool Girls Science and Art Club
mary@coolgirls-scienceart.com
www.coolgirls-scienceart.org
303.931.2280 (mobile)
303.593-2864 (office)
Cool Girls Science and Art Club is a registered nonprofit charitable organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and all donations are deductible. Our federal EIN tax # is 32-0298250. Thanks for your support!
|
|
|
OUR FALL SCHEDULE
Girls in grades 4-5 meet Thursdays from 8/25 - 12/8 from 2:30-4:30 in Renee Cerny's room. No session on Sept 1st or Nov 24th.
Girls in grades 2-3 met Tuesdays from 8/30 - 10/11.
Girls in grade 1 meet Tuesdays from 10/18 - 12/6 from 2:30-4 in Erin Maxwell's room. No session on Nov 22nd.
Cool Girls/Cool Boys, grades 3-5, learn computer game design on Mondays, 10/17-12/5.
Please email Mary to get on a waiting list for winter 2012 sessions, which begin in January.
|
|
Cool Girls' First Fundraiser Nov. 5
Mark your calendars for Saturday, November 5th to attend a Mediterranean Buffet lovingly created with fresh organic ingredients by Cool Girls parent Joelle Friedman, who is also a wellness coach and the former owner of an organic restaurant. Joelle is from Lebanon and a chef extraordinaire. Our host is the Kissinger family at 1733 Norwood Avenue.
Your attendance supports the Cool GIrls Science and Art Club. Tickets are $35 per person. To register please call host Annette Kissinger at 303.933.4758 and send her a check for $35 per person, made out to Cool Girls. An event like this requires lots of work, we need people to sell tickets to friends and associates who support o ur mission. Foundations and businesses to which we will apply for grants for 2012 want to see that our community supports our program, so come and have fun, enjoy great food and bring friends and colleagues who share our vision to help keep girls from leaking out of the STEM pipeline. We hope you can make it, but if not, please send your tax-deductible donation to Cool Girls via Annette.
|
|
Summer into Fall Highlights
(We will get photos on our website of these and other exciting events as soon as possible.)
- Over the summer, Nicole Glaros of TechStars rehearsed some of our girls in how to give an elevator speech about their business ideas.
- We rescheduled our camping trip for September 17-18 on land managed by the non-profit Left Hand Canyon Alliance. Our multicultural group of Cool Girls had a real-life, hands-on experience learning about STEAM as it relates to our home along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Cool Girls now at Centennial joined Crest View 4th- and 5th-graders and one member from Erie. Besides enriching their personal experiences of nature, the trip brought five new girls into our club. We are grateful to scholarship donors Laura and Andreas Lee, Shannon Golden
 -Schubert, Dr. Lauren Costantini, the National Girls Collaborative Project, and the Noyce Foundation for supporting this trip. Scientist Jo Rochester led the girls on a bird-identification walk, let them examine a CU collection of stuffed birds and bones, and helped them draw in their science journals. - On October 4th, Cool Girls board chair and parent, Michelle Christenson, joined her daug
 hter in teaching the girls how to make bristle-bots -- robots made from toothbrushes. BVSD Superintendent, Dr. Bruce Messinger, shared his experiences with the girls and assisted with the experiment. - On Saturday, October 22, SkillShare members and artists Cindy Noel and Laura Denman McCall taught two classes of Cool Girls to paint frescoes. Mary and Cindy added details about the history and science of this 10,000-year-old art form.
- The Tuesday girls brought in their
 pet rodents on September 27th and worked together to build obstacle courses with dads Cam Fraser, Brian Metzler and Mark Smith. The high-spirited girls observed and recorded the behavior of a rabbit, guinea pigs and mice. - On October 6, scientist/Cool Girls parent Augusta Garrison led a biochemistry experiment with her daughter assisting.
- October 11th was the last Cool Girls meeting for this semester for grades 2-3.
- First-graders began their October 18th meeting by learning about our solar system using inflatable planets and their own bodies.
- On October 24th, they went on a field trip to listen to a magical storyteller, Milena Clair Hoffman.
- A dozen New Vista High School students and their science teacher, Kate Hartman, selected Cool Girls as the recipient of their community service award this year. In addition to making explosions through chemistry experiments with the Tuesday and Thursday groups; during the week of October 11, they visited three Cool Girls' classrooms at the invitation of teachers Cindy Weaver, Mark Bauer, and David Mohseni to lead experiments about macroinvertebrates.
- On October 16th, Cool Girls took Lorraine Tartasky up on her invitation to tour Crystal Galleries and learn about rocks, minerals, gems and fossils. This is an elegant and informative exhibit and store on Pearl near 14th Street -- lots of fun for families. After the tour, we took our picnic lunches and found fossils near Highway 36 north of Boulder.
- On October 22nd, artists Cindy Noel and Laura Denman McCall, aided by Mary and parent volunteers, taught the girls how to paint frescoes. Look for a story with photos in our next issue and on our website.
- The first of six sessions on designing computer games with CU's AgentSheets Scalable Game Design took place on October 17th. Taught by Mary, Fred Gluck and other mentors, the class is a huge success with 20 students (more than twice that wanted to enroll).
 | | Dr. Alex Repenning, AgentSheets founder, with Cool Girls at STEMapalooza last year. |
|
|
Who'd-ah thunk it?
A recent study by the UC Berkeley Center for Weight and Health found that children in the school district's program who ate the school lunch, ate three times as many vegetables as those students who brought their lunch from home. For details on this study, go to http://www.chefann.com/html/tools-links/Boulder.html.
|
|
What's Coming Up?
- Field trip to learn about nature and horses with scientist, Dr. Johanna Rochester of CU and Skillshare (date TBD)
- Lost in Lexicon, An Adventure in Words and Numbers, is a delightful, award-winning children's book by Pendred Noyce, which some of our girls have already read. (NOTE: Book two is coming in 2012.) On November 15 and 17, Cool Girls is sponsoring Dr. Noyce herself at Crest View to read from this exciting tale of two children who discover a new world and find its lost children. Penny will lead us in games and activities as part of a Lexicon Villages event on November 15 from 1-2:30 pm in Crest View's cafeteria. To volunteer to staff an activity table that day, email Alma Diaz-Smith (you can come in costume if you like!). Get a head start by ordering the book via Amazon or Penny's site, or get a signed copy when she's at Crest View. Or go to hear Penny read and lead a mini-Lexicon Villages event at the Boulder Book Store on Saturday, November 12 at 2:00 pm. You don't want to miss this opportunity. Mary says she is reading the book again herself because it's so entertaining.
- Exploring a collaboration sometime in 2012 with girls in another location who are interested in collecting atmospheric data through the GLOBE program.
- Collaborate with girls in another country on an art or science project via the Internet.
- Together with Marina LaGrave (formerly of NCAR, now head of an after-school program for Hispanics called CLACE), Cool Girls will offer an after-school program in Red Oak Park, a new housing development for low-income families off Valmont.
- Cool Girls is leading an effort to form a Colorado Collaborative of the National Girls Collaborative Project to bring more of our state's girls into STEM.
- The girls are making a film that will appear on our website.
|
|
Cool Girls Board Member Accomplishments
Shannon Golden-Schubert has joined the University of Colorado Technology Transfer Office's Business Advisory Board and the Legal Committee of the Community Foundation Serving Boulder County. Shannon, who has had three children participate in Cool Girls, is the founder and a partner of Life + Tech Law. Annette Kissinger, also a Cool Girls mom, received the 2011 Education Award from Blue Sky Bridge Child and Family Advocacy Center.
We offer Shannon and Annette our congratulations on these prestigious accomplishments.
|
|
THANKS!
We are so grateful to board member Karen Kehn for handling our financial transactions so well since January 2010. We want to welcome Heidi Jakal as our new bookkeeper.
We are particularly grateful to Laura and Andreas Lee, whose continuing scholarship assistance has made it possible for girls who could not otherwise have participated in Cool Girls to do so. Laura's contribution to strategic planning has also been invaluable.
Nonprofit consultant Pam Bernal has been a font of helpful informat  ion and support since 2010. We also want to thank Dr. Pendred Noyce for her long-time support through the National Girls Collaborative Project. And we couldn't function at all without the financial and other support of all our board members including Michelle Christenson, Shannon Golden-Schubert, Lauren Costantini, Annette Kissinger and Mary Golden, as well as support from other volunteers, mentors, and the staff of Crest View. Cam Fraser moved our supplies twice and we now have a space for them thanks to the kindness of the Hornung family. Alma Diaz-Smith, Cori Chavez-Grandits and Julie Poppen are working on developing a Communications Committee that will use social media and other technology; Cori is making a film and plans to teach the girls video. To all the unnamed volunteers and especially to our girls, thanks so much!
|
|
|
Boulder County Business Report Thinks We're Cool!
Mary Golden and Cool Girls Science and Art Club have been recognized as important to the Boulder County business community, in part because our mentors are helping girls learn about the application of science, engineering, technology, the arts, and mathematics in business. Here is the text of the article "Remarkable Women", that appeared in the July 22-August 4, 2011 issue.
"Mary Golden is a mentor for the ages-all ages. She teaches young girls through the Cool Girls Science and Art Club, and she helps grown scientists refine their public presentations.
"Mary serves as a writing instructor and English-as-a-second language coach for the Communicating Science program at UCAR/NCAR. But the Cool Girls Science and Art Club may be closer to her heart.
"In 2005, Mary began volunteering as a science teacher in her eldest granddaughter's kindergarten classroom at Crest View Elementary School in Boulder. She brought in science and art mentors to do hands-on projects with children in grades K-5 and developed the format that led to Cool Girls.
"The club reaches out to girls, and boys, to engage them in science, technology, engineering, arts and math. If they don't pursue careers in these fields, they've been taught the process of analytical thinking that can be applied to most any situation."
|
|
|
