About 80 girls ages 9 to 15 are expected to come to the University to participate in Take Our Daughters to Work Day Thursday, April 23 -- day dedicated to girls' ideas, spirit and dreams. This is the fifth year that faculty and staff have joined in the national event.
Take Our Daughters to Work Day was created in 1993 by the Ms. Foundation for Women, a national, multi-issue public women's fund based in New York. The day focuses attention on the needs and concerns of girls and helps them stay focused on their future during adolescence -- a period when many girls lose self-esteem.
"This is a day to focus girls' attention on their abilities and to make them see that they can be anything they want to be," said Shirley K. Baker, vice chancellor for information technology and dean of University Libraries. "Each year we've had a larger turnout with men and women from all over campus taking this opportunity to open the University's doors to these girls." Baker was one of the original organizers of this event on campus.
Always held the fourth Thursday in April, previous Take Our Daughters to Work Day events have attracted more than 16 million participants nationwide. Participation at the University was brought to campus in 1994 by the Women Administrators Brown Bag Lunch Group, an informal organization of non-academic women administrators that meets once a month. The College of Arts and Sciences is helping with any costs associated with this year's event.
This year's theme is "Imagine a Day." The event will expose girls to positive role models and will help them learn about the opportunities open to women in various fields.
On-campus activities designed to cultivate the career interests of girls include talks by women professionals in the fields of health, theater, engineering, art and athletics. The girls can take a behind-the-scenes tour of Edison Theatre, attend short opera performances by University students, tour the earthquake and robotics labs at the School of Engineering and Applied Science and check out some unusual World Wide Web sites in the computer lab at Olin Library.
For more information and to register, contact Marilyn Chill at 935-5476.
--Martha Everett
