Thank you, Longmont Community Foundation!

In April the Longmont Community Foundation awarded CG $4,000, with $3,000 designated for general operating support from the Triton Fund and $1,000 from the Nading Family Fund to help us expand to Longmont in 2012-2013.   

 
Thank you, Irving Foundation, Penny Noyce and Shannon Golden-Schubert!   

The Longmont Community Foundation grant, a $3,000 grant through Dr. Pendred Noyce  from  The Irving Foundation  in  January and  dona-

tions from CG board member and attorney Shannon Golden-Schubert, will fund scholarships and develop curriculum and training materials needed to encourage more girls to stick with STEM.  Dr. Noyce is an educator, author of the popular Lost in Lexicon adventure book series, and chair of Tumblehome Learning. Some Cool Girls are currently reading an advance copy of Penny's latest Lexicon book, Ice Castle, to give her feedback before the final version is released in August. 

Thank you, Dr. Lorrie Shepard, Dr. Margaret Eisenhart, Elle Dominski, Julia Kamenetsky, and CU Dorothy Martin Endowment Award Committee!

Penny also linked CG with Dr. Lorrie Shepard, dean of CU's School of Education. Lorrie introduced us to Dr. Margaret Eisenhart, who has a distinguished background in evaluation, education and women's   studies.  Margaret and two of her grad students, Elle Dominski (CU's director of diversity) and Julia Kamenetsky, have generously agreed to lead CG in evaluating our program.  

CU astronomer Julia Kamenetsky to dazzle starry-eyed Cool Girls

 Julia, recipient of the 2012 Dorothy Martin Doctoral Student Award of $2,000 given to a CU doctoral student active in women's issues, chose CG as the organization she would like to assist as part of an astronomy outreach project that will bring women astronomers to mentor our girls. We are very excited about astronomy and eager to begin. 

Thank you, National Girls Collaborative Project and  

the Noyce Foundation!

Last fall the CG board voted to apply to the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) to become the Convening Organization of the new Colorado Collaborative for Girls in STEM (CoCoSTEM) and was selected in March.  Since joining NGCP in 2010, Cool Girls has received valuable training, scholarship funding provided by the Noyce Foundation and collaboration opportunities.  CG board members are currently reviewing the four-year contract that will provide up to  $6,000 in seed funding and up to $10,000 in mini-grants to Colorado organizations that are working to bring more girls and women into STEM.  On March 6, about 75 representatives from the public and private sectors in northeastern Colorado attended the first CoCoSTEM information session, held at Skyline High School in Longmont.    

 As Convenor, CG director Mary Golden recruited a Leadership Team that will guide CoCoSTEM. Members include representatives from the Colorado Coalition for Gender & Information Technology, Colorado Department of Labor & Employment, CU-Science Discovery, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Equity Assistance Center at Metropolitan State College of Denver, Girl Scouts of Colorado, The GLOBE Program (NASA/UCAR), LCC Consulting, Life + Tech Law, National Center for Women & Information Technology, and Skyline High School.   

CoCoSTEM c0-chairs are Mary and Dr. Patricia Quinones, Skyline principal.   Mary, Patty, and two other Leadership Team members will receive training at the NGCP Collaboration Institute and National Conference in the DC area from April 22-27.   

We thank all the people and organizations for the  

hard work that made this good grant news a reality, including our Cool Girls themselves!

On April 3, the last day of spring break, 30 Cool Girls visited the DSM Biosciences Lab for a half-day of hands-on experiments with the company's scientists. That most were women was not overlooked by Cool Girls, one of whom happily exclaimed, "I didn't know there were so many women scientists!"   

CG alumna Alex mixes it up with DSM chemists

Each girl received a science notebook with photos of the presenting scientists as children and stories about how they chose their careers, what they do at DSM, and what they do for fun with family and friends. The notebooks also included room to answer questions related to each station where scientists led them in experiments: "DSM, Algae and DHA", "DNA-What is it?", "Alternative Energy?", "Chemistry Fun", "Chemistry and Analytics", "Brains-Neuroscience", and "Creation Station" where they were asked to draw what they would like to invent and learn about the idea-to-product life cycle.

About a year ago, DSM acquired Martek Biosciences, which developed life'sDHA, a vegetarian source of DHA from algae that is now available in hundreds of food and health products including Horizon organic milk, Flintstone Gummie Plus DNA, yogurt, chocolates, tortillas, pasta and pasta sauce. The girls got to taste a new Minute Maid Enhanced Pomegranate Blueberry Juice that they pronounced delicious. The company is also researching how to make biofuel from microbes to provide an alternative source of energy that is renewable. 

Neuroscientist Augusta Garrison explains how neurons work.

The trip was arranged by Cool Girls parent, mentor and board member Augusta Garrison, a DSM neuroscientist, and her colleagues site managers and scientists Connie Hoon and Bill Barclay, and administrators Jennifer Martinez and Lisa Wood.