Katy Dickinson

MAGIC in Newsweek

On 21 May, I wrote about the new MAGIC girls' mentoring program working with The Girls' Middle School (GMS) in Mountain View, CA. Last week, I was pleased and surprised to find MAGIC mentioned in the June 16, 2008 issue of Newsweek in an article called "Revenge of the Nerdette". I knew about the article in advance because my daughter Jessica was interviewed for it (alas, she did not get mentioned). In fact, I wrote a blog entry on 10 April called "How to Talk with the Press" because Jessica called me for advice on that subject. (Jessica called from from Carnegie Mellon and left me a voice mail message, something like: "Mom, Mom Newsweek wants to interview me, what do I do?".)

"Revenge of the Nerdette" By Jessica Bennett and Jennie Yabroff is interesting and worth reading. MAGIC got mentioned in the last paragraph:

Outreach programs such as TechBridge, an after-school workshop for middle- and high-school girls, and MAGIC (More Active Girls In Computing), a national mentoring program for aspiring computer scientists, are among the dozens of programs aimed at getting girls to think about futures in science and technology. The Nerd Girls also conduct weekly outreach: "We try to give them real examples of what engineers do," says Panetta. "You love watching special effects in 'Harry Potter'? That's an engineer. You like the iPhone? An engineer made that. Cheerleading? Dancing? How about sports engineering?" Because you know, girls: the geeks really are inheriting the earth.

We on the MAGIC core team are still forming the program. It is gratifying if strange to get such high visibility press so early. Not that I am complaining!

Posted at 09:39PM Jun 15, 2008 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  |