Wayne State University and the University of Michigan are offering a special mathematics program titled "Gaining Options: Girls Investigate Real Life" (GO-GIRL), a 10-week session designed exclusively for seventh-grade girls.
On the heels of two highly successful years, GO-GIRL is now accepting applications for the winter session which runs on 10-consecutive Saturdays for five hours each day. Funded by a National Science Foundation grant award, the program is offered jointly by Wayne State University and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan.
Participating students will learn skills that are beneficial in seventh-grade and beyond encouraging them to achieve their full academic potential. Such skills include: scientific reasoning, confidence with computers, using a graphing calculator, learning about careers in mathematics and science, friendships with college student mentors and teachers and enhancing academic self-confidence.
Spearheaded by Pamela Trotman Reid, provost and executive vice president of Roosevelt University in Chicago, and Sally K. Roberts, assistant professor at Wayne State's College of Education, GO-GIRL will also provide academic training for college students.
Pre-service teachers from Wayne State University and undergraduate mentors from the University of Michigan will work with the girls providing them with assistance and instruction on their research projects while helping them explore future career alternatives. "Our goal with GO-Girl is to offer social and science research in a stimulating and fun way," Reid said. "We are attempting, for example, to demonstrate that mathematics is more than just talking about building things or solving abstract problems, that using numbers in different ways may solve other types of questions," Reid added.
Professor Roberts believes the GO-GIRL program reveals the importance of role-modeling for the girls and drives home the fact that women not only excel in mathematics related careers but also enjoy mathematics. "The interaction between the middle-school participants and their college mentors offers an opportunity for the students to begin thinking about career goals and looking more seriously at their future," Roberts said. "The structure of the GO-GIRL program is an empowering experience to the young girls."
GO-GIRL is free and open to a limited number of seventh-grade female students. The application deadline for the winter session is Nov. 1, 2004. Participants are nominated by an adult educator. For more information about the program and registration process, visit the Go-GIRL Web site at http://www.umich.edu/~gogirls/ or contact Noel Kulik, project coordinator, at (313) 587-2510, e-mail n.kulik@wayne.edu.
Wayne State University is a premier institution of higher education offering more than 350 academic programs through 12 schools and colleges to more than 33,000 students in metropolitan Detroit.