Office of Public Relations — Newsroom
News Release
For Immediate Release
Contact: Caitlin Jenney, (303) 724-1520, Caitlin.Jenney@uchsc.edu
Smart-Girl is a Smart Choice for University of Colorado Denver
UC Denver is First in Denver to Partner with Organization That Supports Girls at Critical Time
DENVER, Colo. (Oct. 30, 2007) - Growth spurts, acne, mood swings, social awkwardness-let's face it: Few of us would willingly return to our adolescence. This critical developmental stage can be both physically and mentally painful. Without guidance, many middle school students stress out under the increasing weight of modern-day challenges. That is why the University of Colorado Denver's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences on the downtown Denver campus is proud to become the first higher-education institution in Denver to partner with Smart-Girl, a non-profit, research-based organization that focuses on enrichment and prevention programs for adolescent girls. Together, UC Denver and Smart-Girl have formed a partnership to offer the Smart-Girl Leadership Training Course, as well as internship opportunities.
Through the leadership training, high school and college students learn leadership, facilitation and management of the program; these students then lead small groups of younger girls in activities that focus on team-building, communication skills, mood management, overcoming peer pressure, self respect, motivation for success, conflict resolution and other burgeoning concerns specific to these young women.
Past participants through the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs' Smart-Girl Leadership Institute state that their experiences have helped them to accept themselves, respect others, handle stress and responsibility, and pick the right friends, among other personal improvements. Parents of these girls have declared that their daughters learned to communicate their feelings and work through problems, and that the program showed them that they are not alone in their questions and confusion.
"The UC Denver Smart-Girl partnership creates the supportive communities that are necessary for good decision-making, and provides adolescent girls with the tools that will help them become the confident, capable and self-reliant women they deserve to be," said Sameen Noorulamin, director of programs at Smart-Girl, Inc.
This fall, six UC Denver students are receiving a total of five credit hours for completing Smart-Girl training and internship curriculum. During the course of the academic year, these college interns will mentor 16 high school girls who will in turn become Smart-Girl Guides for all of the 7th grade female students at a local Denver middle school, as well as girls enrolled through the Boys and Girls Clubs of Metro Denver.
For more information on the UC Denver Smart-Girl Leadership Training or the Smart-Girl program , or to support the leadership and community outreach goals of the program, please visit the Web sites.
The University of Colorado Denver is one of three universities in the University of Colorado system. Located in Denver, on the Auraria Campus, at Ninth & Colorado Blvd. and on the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colo., UC Denver is Colorado's premier research university offering more than 100 degrees and programs in 12 schools and colleges and serving more than 28,000 students in Metro Denver and online. For more information, visit the Web site at www.ucdhsc.edu or the UC Denver Newsroom at http://www.uchsc.edu/news.
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