The mission of Cool Girls Science and Art Club is to engage young girls in Science, Technology, Engineering, the 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.
The club was founded in 2008 by a group of 8-year-olds who love inquiry-based, hands-on learning about STEAM.
Cool Girls are at the apex of the power pyramid: Each semester these first- through fifth-graders select and evaluate what they want to learn with mentors' help. All contributions are tax-deductible.
Cool Girls Science and Art Club is proud to be the Convening Organization of the Colorado Collaborative for Girls in STEM and a part of the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP). Major funding comes from the National Science Foundation.
Cool Girls became a 501(c)(3) 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.
Become a Cool Friend of Cool Girls today! Contact Mary Golden, Director, to volunteer or learn more about becoming a sponsor.
We are very grateful for the financial support of the NGCP, the Noyce Foundation, the Irving Foundation, the Longmont Community Foundation, individual donors, and all the time and passion donated by mentors. And to teachers Renee Cerny and Erin Maxwell for sharing their classrooms at Crest View Elementary School in Boulder, CO; CLACE and Red Oak Park.
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Cool Girls Science and Art Club Board of Directors members for 2012-2013 are:
Michelle Christenson, acting Chair;
Augusta Garrison; Mary Golden, Director;
Kate Hartman, Recorder;
Connie Hoon Barclay;
Karen Kehn;
Annette Kissinger; Cindy Noel, Art Director;
Egbe Osamwonyi;
Emma Schwartz;
Evie Verderber
Cool Girls Science and Art Club Board of Advisors members for 2012-2013 are:
Dr. Margaret Eisenhart,
Shannon Golden-Schubert,
Dr. Peggy LeMone,
Dr. Samantha Messier,
Julie Poppen
COOL GIRLS IS SEARCHING FOR BOARD MEMBERS AND EXPERIENCED VOLUNTEERS TO SERVE AS CHAIR, TREASURER, LOGISTICS DIRECTOR, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, and NEWSLETTER EDITOR. CONTACT: coolgirls.scienceart [at] gmail.com
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September 2012
Dear Friends of Cool Girls,
We're excited to start another year of Cool Girls learning and fun! Thank you for supporting this one-of-a-kind, girl-led, after-school club. We strive to build self-confidence as girls explore science, technology, engineering, the arts and math with the help of fantastic community mentors. Don't forget to "like" us on Facebook for updates on field trips and local science events, photos and videos of Cool Girls at work and play (upload your own photos, as well!), news and opportunities for girls related to science, and more.
Susan Enfield, Newsletter Editor, and Mary Golden, Director
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Fall Schedule and Events
Cool Girls will continue at Crest View the popular astronomy program from this summer at Red Oak Park, which is led by CU's Julia Kamenetzky.
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Please visit our online calendar for the latest on regular meetings, field trips and community events. Both CG groups will meet weekly through December 13, with the exception of Teacher Conference days October 30 & November 1, and Thanksgiving week.
Field trip: Google tour. We are excited about our first field trip for both groups, a tour of Google's local offices! It's on Tuesday, October 9, 3-4 pm. We need parents to help carpool; please contact Michelle Christenson.
 On Saturday mornings (9:30-11 am), we plan a free open engineering and art lab soon at the Community Center at Red Oak Park (on Valmont near 26th); check CG's calendar and FB page for updates. We need construction sets, odds & ends, tools, batteries, wires, screws, wood, scraps and handy mentors.
Please come to our Parent Meeting (October 3, 7:30-9 pm, location TBD) to share ideas about what works best for helping the girls with STEAM and to learn about our long-term perspective for your daughters. More details soon.
Please make sure you have sent a check for your fall tuition fee to our bookkeeper. Scholarships and payment plans area available. No girl is turned away for financial reasons alone. If you need more information, please contact CG board member Augusta Garrison.
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Cool Girls at CU Natural History Museum
For six sessions from September 20-October 25, Cool Girls (grades 4/5) will enjoy an incredible opportunity to do hands-on science work with real scientists in their labs and explore behind the scenes at CU's Museum of Natural History, as part of the Girls At the Museum Exploring Science (GAMES) program directed by Dr. Cathy Regan. The group will travel round-trip with a CG chaperone on RTD's 204 bus, returning to Crest View around 5:30 pm. CG families will be invited to join for a final evening session! More details to come.
Please also plan to attend the museum's free Family Day on Saturday, September 22, from 10 am-4 pm. It will be a celebration of weather, clouds and volcanoes. To learn about monthly museum events, subscribe to their newsletter.
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Gratitude for our Cool Girls Angels
We thank many wonderful people who help Cool Girls thrive:
- Thanks for generous donations from Connie Hoon Barclay and Bill Barclay, Shannon Golden-Schubert, Mary Golden and Cindy Noel!
- Thanks to Julie Poppen for her tremendous newsletter and social media work!
- Thanks to Michelle, Lauren, Rachel, Susan, Layla, Jack, Cindy and Mary for outreach at Crest View's picnic.
- Thanks to the Carolyn Hornung family and to Susan Enfield for hosting storage of CG equipment and for her newsletter work! We'll need help one afternoon soon to move.
- Thanks to Erin Maxwell, Renée Cerny and Crest View and to Red Oak Park and CLACE for hosting CG meetings!
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CG alumna Nevaeh assembled & demonstrated it.
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Thanks to our CU astronomers, the friendly PhD candidates Julia Kamenetzky and Susanna Kohler, and to CG's Cindy Noel, Mary Golden and Michelle Christenson for their hard work on our late-summer astronomy overnight field trip! (Read more about the trip below.) We appreciate the efforts of the Mountain Research Station staff, Kelly Matheson and Dr. Alan Kiplinger to help make this event a success. - Thanks to CU Women in Astronomy for mentoring Cool Girls this summer and fall, including Julia Kamenetzky, Aubra Anthony, Susanna Kohler, Amandeep Gill, Cara Battersby and Allison Youngblood!
- Thanks to Shannon Golden-Schubert and to Berg, Hill, Greenleaf and Ruscitti for hosting CG board meetings!
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Other Cool Events and News
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New book from Pendred Noyce. Many of you remember last year's generous visit by Noyce, chair of Tumblehome Learning, the author of the award-winning Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers and a great CG friend and supporter. Check out her exciting new title, The Ice Castle: An Adventure in Music, which some Cool Girls gave "Thumbs Up!" as pre-publication feedback. - CU Science Wizards. We're encouraging CG families to carpool to these great free monthly Saturday events; check out the schedule.
- Smithsonian's Free Museum Day. It's on September 29! Find local events here.
- Cooking with Jojo. CG parent and health and nutrition coach extraordinaire, Joelle Friedman, offers classes in kids' home kitchens. She's a pro at building kids' confidence and skills about cooking delicious, healthy food. Joelle prepared a scrumptious, organic Mediterranean feast last fall as a successful fundraiser for CG.
- How to Get to Mars. Check out this cool YouTube video with your kids.
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What We Did Recently
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CU Mountain Research Station Astronomy & Nature Fun Family Field Trip
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In late August, a lucky group of CGs, alumnae, families and astronomy mentors Julia Kamenetzky and Susanna Kohler spent time exploring nature, making art and learning about planetary rotations, the relative sizes of stars in our galaxy and much more.
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Sun-Earth-Moon Rotation
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Dr. Alan Kiplinger certified our astronomers on the 12-inch telescope he gave to CU and helped with CGs. Fourth-grade CG Layla says: "I loved looking through the big telescope at night. We saw Venus, the Ring Nebula, a globular cluster, and Antares, the biggest star. It was also cool to look at the sun during
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Rachel, Lauren, Layla rotate like Sun, Earth, Moon.
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the day. We saw a solar storm through the telescope and we looked at the sun through dark glasses." Layla and Lauren were excited to share what they'd learned with their class at Crest View, which is now studying planets. "People didn't think the sun rotated--even our teacher--but we told them it did," Layla says. "They looked it up that night and the next day, they said, 'You're right.'"
Exploding watermelons!
At the first session of each semester, the girls tell Mary what they want to learn and she recruits mentors to help them.
 Knowing that "Explosions!" usually tops the list, CG art director Cindy Noel put together a fun & messy watermelon-exploding activity. Both groups learned about mass, weight and models through investigations tailored to grade level. They measured and recorded the distance of fragments from impact and discussed the effects on dispersal. The older group held a spirited debate of the Big Bang Theory, concluding that one of them just may find the answer to what came before the biggest explosion of all--as far as we know now. The girls then created vibrant pastel drawings, representational and abstract, of melon slices that they soon gobbled up!
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Tessa's Zoo: A Cool Girl Chronicle
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"I love animals and I love building things and art. My zoo project was fun because we found things around the house to decorate it."
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What does a Cool Girl do over the summer? Second-grader Tessa created her own zoo! Inspired by the Caine's Arcade video shared in the Cool Girls newsletter last May and a recent trip to the San Diego Zoo, Tessa embarked on her own cardboard creation: a nearly 7-foot-long zoo with elephant, tiger, giraffe, red panda, polar bear, dolphin, flamingo and sea lion exhibits. The zoo's entrance has a green lawn with trees and flowers, as well as concession stands for cotton candy and smoothies. The zoo workers have a vehicle to carry supplies between exhibits. Tessa wants readers to know that her mom and summer sitter helped bring her vision to life. What she likes best about her zoo is the sea lion exhibit, which features beautiful green and blue smoothed glass pieces in a pool of turquoise water for the animals--and visitors--to enjoy. |
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CG Board News
The next Board meeting will be Tuesday, September 18, 7:30-9 pm. Contact Michelle or Mary for details. We extend a warm welcome to new Board of Directors members Connie Hoon Barclay, Emma Schwartz and Evie Verderber; and Board of Advisors members Dr. Margaret Eisenhart, Julie Poppen and Shannon Golden-Schubert. In addition to working with Dr. Eisenhart and Dr. Cher Hendricks on evaluating our learning process, Cool Girls is undertaking a 360-degree Board self-assessment process through the Nonprofit Cultivation Center, which will generate a $1000 grant for technical assistance from a consultant in areas of growth.
Cindy and Mary are writing a Cool Girls curriculum manual in preparation for our anticipated expansion to Longmont in 2013.
New Board Members Needed
Social Venture Partners is sponsoring BoardMatch on September 19. Cool Girls will have a table to meet potential Board members. We will also participant in Board training sessions and enjoy a delicious meal. Contact Mary if you'd like to participate.
Because Cool Girls is growing, we need five experienced volunteers to join us during this auspicious and exciting time in Cool Girls' history. We hope to fill these positions asap: Chair, Treasurer, Logistics Director (field trips and snacks), Assistant Director (administration) and Newsletter Editor. If you don't have time to serve on the board but would like to help with photos, the website, mentoring the girls or in other ways, let us know.
On average, most nonprofit board members volunteer about 8-10 hours per month when work is equitably distributed over a year. If you are interested, know someone who might be, or would like to volunteer in another capacity not mentioned here, please contact Michelle or Mary. Boards should be diverse and inclusive of all segments of the community.
Colorado Collaborative for Girls in STEM (CoCoSTEM)
Cool Girls is the Convening Organization for CoCoSTEM, an affiliate of the National Girls Collaborative Project that has served more than 5.5 million girls since 2002 through organizations like ours. The National Science Foundation provides small grants to build collaborations that increase gender equity.
CoCoSTEM's Leadership Team and Champions Board will invite groups from the public and private sectors all across the state to attend a kick-off in the next two or three months. Please like our new Facebook page.
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Simple Ways You Can Help Cool Girls We need a few good volunteers to:
- Help put together the newsletter and/or update the calendar on the website, once a month or so, with Susan Enfield.
- Update the website, Facebook and Twitter.
- Take photos or video of CG sessions and field trips and upload them to Facebook.
- Move CG supplies to their new home by early October.
- Distribute fliers in Boulder Meadows and Red Oak Park to promote the Saturday free labs at Red Oak Park. Please contact Michelle if you may be able to help!
- Help your daughter do a presentation to her group.
- Share your special expertise with Cool Girls.
- Donate to Cool Girls to help us buy laptops, microscopes and other equipment, and to provide scholarships.
- Vote in the upcoming election!
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