Volume 80, Issue 6

President’s Message

Dear Arlington AAUW members,

Back in war time 1944 a group of women met in Fairlington to establish an Arlington branch of the American Association of University Women, now known as AAUW.  2024 marks the 80^th anniversary of the founding of our branch, and we plan to celebrate our anniversary this fall and learn more about how our branch came to be.  If you are interested in working on our history project, let me know. On June 12, our Board will meet to plan our activities for the upcoming year, so if you have any ideas and suggestions, be sure to let Barbara Smith know beforehand.

At our May branch meeting we had the pleasure of meeting our scholarship recipients, science fair winners, and outstanding teacher.  The students all came with not only their parents, but aunts, uncles, and grandparents as well. Our teachers came with the Kenmore principal and colleagues and sorority sisters.  It was a very festive affair with cake and punch.  Meg Tuccillo presented the Elizabeth Campbell arts scholarship and the outstanding teacher award.  Susan Senn presented the STEM scholarship and science fair awards and Mary Beth Pelosky presented the Arlington Community High School Lunch Bunch scholarship.  It was a very moving evening for all.

Please join me in recognizing all the work done by branch volunteers. We thank Meg for chairing the scholarship and awards committee again this year.  Kudos to Susan for doing an excellent job of preparing our students for their Zoom science fair presentations in April and for organizing a robotics coding workshop for Arlington high school students in May.  We also appreciate Mary Beth and Meg for all their work in bringing great activities to the monthly lunch bunch students at Arlington Community High School.  We also applaud the other branch members who keep our branch running smoothly – Treasurer Teri Doxsee has done a great job of keeping our books in order, VPs for Programs, Barbara Smith and Barbara Gallagher organized a series of interesting and varied monthly programs, VP for Membership Candace Lilyquist has been working on increasing membership, VP for Communications Rebecca Moscoso has gotten out our bimonthly newsletter and kept our web page updated, Barbara G has organized our monthly book discussions, and Carol Dabbs updated our bylaws.

Everyone should have received their dues renewal email from National AAUW.  The national, state, and local dues are the same as last year-$103. If you have difficulty doing the renewal on line, you can send your check to Teri Doxsee and she will complete it for you.

Best wishes to everyone for a happy and restful summer.  I hope it is not too hot for us.  Fall is sure to bring lots of interesting activities for us to enjoy together.   See you then!

Sincerely,

Terry Bratt, Arlington Branch President

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Arlington AAUW Branch meetings – Program Suggestions for next year

Please send in your suggestions for programs for next year’s monthly meetings. We are looking for program ideas for six months next year: September, October, November, January, February, and March. We will be voting on these suggestions at the June meeting of the AAUW-Arlington Board.

 Here are some ideas that have been proposed:

• Book talk on “Eliza Scidmore: From Early White House Reporting to Washington’s Cherry Trees”. Scidmore is the woman responsible for bringing the cherry trees to Washington.
• Program on the Arlington Food Assistance Center (AFAC), its role in the Arlington Community and the people that it helps.
• Follow-up program on the new Title IX regulations.
• Program on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
• Program on the women in Arlington who stood up to the Massive Resistance Movement in the 1950s that opposed desegregating public schools.
• Program on the AAUW-Arlington Branch’s 80^th anniversary.
• Program on Optimal Aging by Dr. Heyn, Marymount Center on Optimal Aging.
• Updates on artificial intelligence and ChatGPT
• Program on what comes next after Columbia Pike renovation

 Send your suggestions to Barbara Smith and Barbara Gallagher.

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Let’s Talk About Books

Our June meeting is Tuesday, June 25, 2 pm.  Our book selection is Under the Sky We Make by Kimberly Nicholas. The meeting will be at your regular Zoom location. Shortly before the meeting Terry Bratt will send an invitation with the Zoom information. So, watch your email and come join the fun!  Look forward to seeing you then.

Our July meeting is scheduled for July 23, at 2 pm at the home of Barbara Gallagher.  Our book selection is How It All Began by Penelope Lively.

At our July meeting we will have the opportunity to lobby for our suggestions for next year, but the vote of the group will determine if it makes the list.  We need 11 titles since we do not meet in August.  When considering your suggestions (a maximum of three) we ask that it be readily available at the library or in paperback.  If you send me your suggestions with a short blurb about the book, I will compile the list and send to all before the meeting so you can be contemplating your choices.

Here is a link to the Master Book List so you can see what we have already read.

Barbara Gallagher, Let’s Talk About Books Chair

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AAUW Membership is in Season

Your membership ensures a powerful voice is amplified on critical issues affecting women of all ages and girls. Each year we renew our commitment to focus on economic security, education and Title IX, and civil rights.

Speaking of renewal, June is the typical month to renew dues. You should have received a little prompt from AAUW reminding you your dues were coming due. Please check online or contact Candace Lilyquist or Teri Doxsee for help.

Continuing members can log on to renew or send a $103 check to Teri Doxsee for the full dues amount. Lifetime members pay $31 for state and local dues. This should be paid via the website or by sending a check to Teri Doxsee. Individuals who have trouble logging on may need to change their passwords.

AAUW now runs a 12 month membership. This means, if you joined in August. Your membership renews in the same month you joined (August of the following year). Again, please reach out to the membership chair or the treasurer if you have questions or need any assistance.

Thank you for your activism and dedication to making the opportunities for women and girls better than they ever have been. This really is the season for change.

Candace Lilyquist, VP Membership

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Arlington AAUW Awards Evening, May 24

Our annual Arlington AAUW awards event took place on Monday, May 20th, at the Lubber Run Community Center, 300 N Park Drive, Arlington 2203, at 7 pm. We honored our STEM scholarship winners, Olivia Bartrum from Wakefield High School and Nicola Beaumont from HB Woodlawn Secondary School, along with two middle school Science Fair Award winners, Cassi Wells from Williamsburg Middle School and Amelia Pearson from Swanson Middle School.  We also recognized our AAUW Elizabeth Campbell Arts Scholarship winner, Niyah Wertz from Wakefield, and our Lunch Bunch awardee, Nicole Sotelo from Arlington Community High School.  In addition, we awarded the AAUW Educator of the Year Award to Eurith Bowen, Functional Life Skills Teacher at Kenmore Middle School. It was inspiring to hear from our awardees and we enjoyed meeting their families and friends and we wish them all the best in their future endeavors.

Barbara Gallagher and Barbara Smith, Co VPs Program

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Lunch Bunch

Those if you who were able to join in our scholarship presentation shared in the joy of seeing our Lunch Bunch Scholar, Nicole Sotelo, receive her reward and see  her four-year old daughter’s excitement! Nicole is one great example of the young women we met at our monthly Lunch Bunch gatherings. This year we have been able to provide presentations from other women who are strong examples of resilience and determination and who shared their stories to give our young women hope for their own futures. Each month we have seen growth in these students, and we get to join in their discussions about their hopes and dreams!!

Why not consider joining us next year? We will share some specific plans in September, so stay tuned!!

Mary Beth Pelosky and Meg Tucillo, Lunch Bunch

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Girls in STEM – A STEMtastic Season

Arlington AAUW has had a very active, exciting, STEM season, from  December, 2024-May, 2024. First, judging took place at three Arlington high school Science Fairs in December, January and February. This gave our team a chance to pre-look and identify some outstanding projects at the school level. Many of those projects then were deemed worthy enough to be sent on to the Regional Fair which took place on March 2 at Wakefield High School. Prior to that fair, Barbara Smith and I read through about 160 abstracts authored by Arlington Public School middle and high school girls in order to boil down a list to about 30 projects that we could judge on the day of the Regional Fair. Paring down those abstracts meant reading them all about three times to create a fair and thorough list.

On the day of the fair, we each judged all 30 projects independently using a rubric developed specifically for the Science Fair. At the days’ end, we identified two first place high school and two middle school winners, as well as eight 2^nd place winners at both levels. Our first place winners were awarded $1,000 scholarships which will be sent to their choice of colleges or universities. Our middle school winners each received a $100 check. The 2^nd place winners each received a $25 gift card to One More Page Books, which we support. One of our high school winners, Olivia Batrum, was selected as one of the two top Regional Fair winners and went on to compete in the ISEF International Science Fair in Los Angeles. She was the first place winner there. And, as an aside, our first place winner from last year, Anna Mohanty, won a 2^nd place also at the ISEF International Fair this year. If any of you have a subscription to the Arlington Magazine, our first place winner from two years ago, Julia Brodsky, graced the cover of the March/April edition. She went  to MIT with her $1,000 scholarship from us at AAUW.

Then, we had a great 2^nd STEM event. National AAUW had 75 STEM Lingo kits to give to several AAUW branches all over the state. We agreed to take the kits in order to plan a workshop using the kits. They were designed to assemble and code for building a computer-based back-up sensor for a car. The roll-out for the event was quite difficult in the planning. National was dealing with programs all over the state with different ideas about how (especially how) and when the event was to take place, how we would recruit the girls to participate, and where we could get the technical help to do this. This was all happening too, right around Spring Break and the end of the 3^rd quarter. I cannot count the hours spent on this project.

I chose to apply for a room at Lubber Run, asked the girls who were the 2^nd place winners of the Science Fair and recruited one student from HB-Woodlawn. Luckily, I have an Airbnb guest, a post-doc working in a Chemistry/Physics lab at GWU who knew everything about the kit. He was our onsite technician. STEM Lingo, over Zoom, walked us through the kit on Saturday, May 18, 9-12. Before the workshop ended, all four girls had lit, beeped, and created a variable distance. Two parents joined us and spoke up afterwards, asking if we were organizing any other similar projects. Hmmmmm.

All in all it was a very busy and worthwhile STEM season and great recognition for our AAUW branch. Many, many thanks to Barbara Smith for her help with the Science Fair.

Susan Senn, Stem Coordinator

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Public Policy

 

The Virginia General Assembly passed a compromise two-year spending plan that boosts funding for education and other priorities without increasing taxes. Votes in both the Senate and House of Delegates were nearly unanimous. The budget includes 3 percent raises in each of the next two years for teachers and state employees, as well as big increases in funding for K-12 schools, higher education and mental health services.

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Virginia AAUW State Conference

For the past two years, I have served as Virginia AAUW co-VP for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. At our state conference in April.  Erica Brown-Meredith and I shared some tips to help us all when we encounter incidents of microaggression at meetings — and in our everyday lives. Microaggressions are the everyday verbal, nonverbal and environmental slights, snubs and insults, whether intentional or not, that communicate hostile, derogatory or negative messages to target persons based solely on their marginalized group membership. One example to avoid microaggressions is to use the RAVEN Approach. As we close out the year, please keep the RAVEN approach, explained below, in mind when you consider your response to a given microaggression:

R – Redirect (intervene, correct, pull aside)

A – Ask probing questions for clarity (I think I heard you say/what did you mean to say?)

V – Values clarification (in AAUW, we try to provide safe and welcoming environments)

E – Emphasize your own thoughts and feelings (that makes me feel…)

N – Next steps (reflect on how you will handle future situations)

As we all look ahead to planning our programs and events for next year, let’s be attentive to the environment that we provide so all our members feel comfortable and included!

Meg Tucillo