MORE ACTIVE GIRLS IN COMPUTING

MAGIC

MORE ACTIVE GIRLS IN COMPUTING

MAGIC  NEWS

  • February – Week of 5

    New MAGIC Mentoring Session Starts at Marymount School

    We are excited to share the news that we are, once again, partnering with Marymount School of New York in Manhattan, New York. This year we are hosting two tenth graders and one eleventh grader.

    Each mentee has a unique STEM area of interest: neuroscience, dermatology, and sustainability. We send our warmest wishes to each mentor-mentee pair, and look forward to their accomplishments during their MAGIC session, and to their final presentation events in May.

    January – Week of 15 – 2

    2023-2024 MAGIC Session Commences for Independent Mentees

    The 2023-2024 MAGIC mentoring session for our set of independent mentees kicked off this week for one middle and two high school students. These mentees applied autonomously through our website, and not through a partner school. The mentees include dynamic seventh and eleventh graders from California, alongside an ambitious twelfth grader residing in Poland. Their interests include public health, advocacy, and computer science.

    We look forward to the accomplishments of these three mentor-mentee pairs during their MAGIC session, and to their final presentation events in May.

    January – Week of 15 – 1

    New MAGIC Mentoring Session Starts at Fieldston School

    We are delighted to announce our continued partnership with the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Bronx, New York, marking the third consecutive year of collaboration.

    This year, our mentoring program welcomes two enthusiastic tenth grade students and one dynamic eleventh grader from this school, all sharing a passion for environmental sustainability and computer science.

    As we embark on the 2023-2024 MAGICal journey, we extend our best wishes to each mentor-mentee pair for a year filled with growth, learning, and success!

    January – Weeks of 1 and 8

    MAGIC Mentoring Sessions Start at Partner Schools

    The 2023-2024 MAGIC sessions kicked off at four schools in the US in the weeks of January 1 and January 8, 2024.

    • The Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, California, started its MAGIC session on January 5. There are three mentees participating from this school this year. Our new mentees include two ninth graders, and an eleventh grader who also participated earlier in MAGIC as a middle-schooler.
    • The Menlo School in Atherton, California, kicked off its MAGIC session on January 8. There are two mentees participating from this school in the 2023-2024 session, both of whom are ninth graders.
    • The MAGIC session at the Milpitas Unified School District (MUSD) started on Wednesday January 10, with five mentees participating this year. All five are from the seventh and eighth grades at the Rancho Milpitas Middle School in Milpitas, California.
    • Starting January 11, 2024, nine mentees are ready for a new MAGIC session at The Girls' Middle School (GMS) in Palo Alto, California. GMS girls from the sixth through eighth grades will connect with women mentors in the STEM field to research and create projects together. GMS is one of MAGIC's original pilot schools from 2009, and this year's mentors include one GMS alumnus!

    Here's wishing each of the mentee-mentor pairs a MAGICal journey through the next five months, culminating with them showcasing their projects in May 2024!

  • December – Week of 11

    2023 MAGIC Pilot Session at Brazilian School Concludes

    The MAGIC pilot session at the Maria de Almeida Schledorn Professora school in Brazil concluded this month, with the final presentations being held on the 11th. of December.

    The school principal and coordinators and family members of the mentees watched the final presentations. The projects were:

    • Black help: an app aiming to share more about black history, black fashion, black music, black recipes, etc.
    • "H.istory": an app that reads one's location and presents historical facts about nearby sites.
    • Soccer Around the World: a news website focused on women’s soccer.

    Congratulations to the three mentees for their hard work and dedication throughout this short but productive pilot session! Our sincere thanks to the mentors who guided the mentees through the course of their projects. Thanks also to our session manager, MAGIC PM Sabrine S. The slides for the presentations are available here.

    November – Week of 13

    2023-2024 MAGIC Session Kicks Off at SKA

    This year, MAGIC is partnering again with the SKA High School for Girls. Our 2023-2024 session is now under way with six mentor-mentee pairs. This group of mentees are high school students in grades nine through eleven, who are interested in pursuing a variety of STEM careers, including biology, technology and engineering.

    This session will end with final presentation events in May 2024. We wish each mentor-mentee pair a MAGICal journey over the coming months!

    September – Week of 18

    A New MAGIC Pilot Session Starts in a Brazilian School

    This week we kicked off a pilot session with the Maria de Almeida Schledorn Professora school in Brazil. This is a public school located in the city of Jundiai, São Paulo. We have three mentor-mentee pairs starting to meet this coming week, with the final presentations planned for around mid-December 2023.

    We are very excited about this session, and wish them all an amazing and MAGICal experience!

    August – Week of 21

    2023 MAGIC Summer Session Concludes

    This week, we closed out the Summer 2023 MAGIC session, with two final presentations over the course of two days. Six mentees presented on Friday the 25th of August, and another six on Saturday the 26th.

    There were three middle school mentees, and the remaining mentees were in high school. The projects ranged over topics including research into gallstones, research into nano-particles, preservation of historical artifacts, website development, app development, games, usage of a micro:bit, and data analysis.

    Congratulations to the twelve mentees for their hard work and dedication this summer! Our heartfelt thanks to the mentors who guided the mentees through the course of their projects. Thanks also to our session manager, MAGIC PM Aline G. The slides for the presentations are available here:

    June – Week of 19

    2023 MAGIC Summer Session Starts

    This week the Summer 2023 MAGIC Session kicked off with twelve mentee-mentor pairs! This is the largest summer cohort MAGIC has had (our summer 2021 cohort also had twelve mentee-mentor pairs). In this summer 2023 session, there are two international mentees, one from Brazil, and our first mentee from Afghanistan. The remaining mentees reside in the west coast and east coast in the US. We have three middle school mentees, and the remaining nine are high schoolers.

    We look forward to seeing the great projects the mentees will come up with at the final presentation at the end of August. We wish them all the best as they begin this MAGICal journey!

    May – Week of 22

    2022-23 MAGIC Sessions Conclude With the SKA Final Presentation Event

    Eight high schoolers from The SKA High School for Girls, Hewlett, NY, who participated in this MAGIC session, presented their work at the final presentation event held on the school premises on May 22nd.

    The SKA on-site event was attended by mentees, mentors, mentee families, school staff and MAGIC personnel. Mentees, from grades nine through twelve, presented their projects and demos, on topics ranging from website development, machine learning, and blog site development, to building remote controlled airplanes, to DNA sequencing code, research into fluorescence, and correlation of stress to epigenetics of the kidney. The presentation slides for this event can be viewed here.

    Congratulations to each of the eight mentee-mentor pairs for a job very well done! And thanks to the SKA coordinator for MAGIC, Chana Glatt, and to the MAGIC PM for SKA, Katherine Cleary, for ensuring a smooth mentoring session for one of the larger mentee groups in this session!

    This event was the last of the string of final events for the 2022-23 MAGIC sessions across Brazil, India and the US. All the mentee presentations have been recorded, and each mentee-mentor pair was interviewed. Please watch this space for an announcement as and when those videos are released.

    May – Week of 15 – 4

    Last MAGIC Final Event of This Week at Castilleja School

    The final presentation events of this week ended with the fifth one being held on the 19th. of May, at Castilleja School in Palo Alto, CA. This was a hybrid event, with the presenters and most of the audience physically on-site at the school, and one of the mentors and MAGIC personnel joining on video chat. The event was attended by mentees, mentors, mentee families, school staff and MAGIC personnel. Two middle schoolers, one in the sixth and the other in the seventh grade, participated in this year's MAGIC session. The projects ranged from interactive games using Processing and Scratch, to the use of Python to build games, visualize data and build ML models. More information on these projects can be found in this presentation slide deck.

    Many thanks to the Castilleja staff members, Ann Greyson and Sarah Barnum, for coordinating the program so well at the Castilleja end, and to the MAGIC PM for Castilleja, Ira Pramanick, for working with the coordinators and ensuring a successful MAGIC session at Castilleja yet again.

    Huge congratulations to both the mentee-mentor pairs for excellent work, both on the projects, as well as on the presentations.

    May – Week of 15 – 3

    MAGIC Final Events on Both the US Coasts

    Two final MAGIC presentations took place on May 18: at the Marymount School of New York City in Manhattan, NY, and at the Milpitas Unified School District (MUSD) middle schools in Milpitas, CA.

    • Marymount Event:
      Three high schoolers, two from the 11th. grade, and the third from the 12th. grade, participated in the MAGIC session this year. The final event was hybrid, with the mentees, the school coordinator, and local MAGIC representative physically on-site at the school, and the remaining audience participating through video chat. Their projects ranged from a sports website, to investigation into telescope technology, to applying computer technology in space. The final presentation slide deck has details on these projects.
    • MUSD Event:
      The two participating middle schools were the Rancho Middle School and the Thomas Russell Middle School. A total of five middle schoolers, two from the seventh grade and the remaining three from the eight grade, participated in this MAGIC session. This event was purely virtual through video chat, and was attended by mentees, mentors, mentee families, MUSD representatives and MAGIC personnel. Mentee projects included Finch games, interactive websites, python games, an app for classifying skin lesions, and a generative chatbot. Project presentations were accompanied by video demos, and details can be found here.

    Congratulations on an outstanding job to all eight MAGIC mentee-mentor pairs! Many thanks to the following:

    • The program coordinator at Marymount, Anne Kloimwieder.
    • The program coordinators at MUSD, Sheetal Raina and Robert Jung.
    • The MAGIC PM at Marymount, Hollis Roberts.
    • The MAGIC PM at MUSD, Katherine Cleary.

    May – Week of 15 – 2

    Fieldston MAGIC Final Presentation Event Held

    The second MAGIC session at the Ethical Culture Fieldston High School, located in the Bronx, NY, concluded on May 16th., with project presentations and demos by three students. Two of the mentees are 9th. graders, and the third one is an 11th. grader. Their projects, as can be seen in the presentation slide deck, included

    • A mobile Nutritional App
    • Digital Image Processing and Analysis using Kaggle Notebook and Data
    • Research on Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma

    The audience for the event was mentees and their families, mentors, school personnel, MAGIC staff, and friends.

    Many thanks to Kurt Vega and Paul Church (the Fieldston coordinators for MAGIC), and Hollis Roberts (the MAGIC PM for Fieldston) for another successful session at Fieldston. Huge congratulations to the three mentee-mentor pairs for their remarkable projects!

    May – Week of 15 – 1

    MAGIC Session Concludes at Eastside College Prep

    Two high schoolers, a 10th. grader and a 12th. grader from Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, CA, completed their MAGIC mentoring session, with their final MAGIC presentation event held on May 15th.

    The audience consisted of the school personnel, MAGIC team members, mentees and mentors, family and friends. Both the mentees built websites on socially relevant topics:

    • An Immigration Resource Website
    • A Sexual Education Website

    Kudos to both the mentees and their mentors for their amazing work and fantastic presentations! Their presentation slide deck contains details and video demos of their projects.

    Many thanks to Amairany Fuentes (the Eastside MAGIC Coordinator) and Katherine Cleary (the MAGIC PM for Eastside) for a very successful MAGIC session at Eastside!

    May – Week of 8

    MAGIC and GMS Complete Fifteen Years of Partnership!

    Ten middle schoolers from The Girls Middle School (GMS) in Palo Alto, CA, presented their MAGIC projects at an on-site final presentation event at the school, on Friday, May 12th. This was the first on-site event after a five year hiatus and remote final presentation events due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The event was attended by mentee parents and families, school personnel, MAGIC personnel, GMS alums and mentors. All ten mentors were in attendance, three joining virtually via Zoom, and seven attending in person. Three of the remote mentors traveled to the bay area to join the presentation in person.

    The slide deck from the presentations can be viewed here. After each mentee had presented her project, there was a science fair style live demonstration session, held concurrently for all ten projects.

    This group of mentees is our largest ever for a partner school, and is exactly the same size that the pilot group was at the MAGIC pilot session at the same school fifteen years ago!

    Many congratulations to the ten mentee-mentor pairs for their remarkable accomplishments over the past four months that constituted their mentoring session! This MAGIC session at GMS was run by the MAGIC coordinator at GMS, Laura Reeve, and the MAGIC PM for GMS, Ira Pramanick.

    May – Week of 1

    The 2022-2023 MAGIC Session in India Concludes

    The second session of MAGIC at the Amarjyoti Saraswati International School in India culminated in a final presentation event on May 2nd. (US time)/May 3rd. (India time). Two mentees, a 9th. and a 12th. grader, presented their MAGIC projects and experiences to an audience of 9th. and 12th. graders, school staff including the Principal and Vice-Principal, mentee families, mentors and MAGIC staff. Both the mentees built topical websites, one on tourism in the state of Gujarat in India, where this school is located, and the other a cooking website.

    As is evident from the slides from this event, both the mentees did an amazing job on their projects and their presentations. Kudos to the mentors as well for working across the almost half-a-day time zone difference between US and India.

    A huge congratulations to both the mentee-mentor pairs, the MAGIC coordinator from Amarjyoti, Mr. Niren Pandya, and the MAGIC PM for Amarjyoti, Ira Pramanick.

    April – Week of 24

    MAGIC Final Presentation Events Kick Off to a Great Start!

    The first group of the 2022-23 MAGIC mentees presented their projects with a final presentation event held on Friday, April 28th. Three mentees, all 9th. graders from The Menlo School in Atherton, CA, did an amazing job of presenting their projects and their experiences. The audience comprised some of the Menlo staff, MAGIC members, mentors and mentee parents. The projects were:

    • Learning/Practising Genetic Engineering
    • Using Machine Learning for Drug Discovery, and
    • Using Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning to Improve Diagnosis for Women in Cardiac Clinical Trials

    Videos of the presentations and the mentee-mentor interviews will be posted in the near future. In the meantime, here's the final presentation slide deck.

    Congratulations to all the mentee-mentor pairs, the MAGIC coordinator at Menlo, Nina Arnberg, and the MAGIC PM for Menlo, Katherine Cleary.

    January – Weeks of 20 and 27

    MAGIC Sessions Kick Off for Menlo School and Independents

    The last of the 2022-2023 MAGIC sessions started in the last two weeks of January 2023, at The Menlo School in Atherton, CA, and also for the independent mentees (those that do not attend one of the MAGIC partner schools, but applied for the session through our website).

    • There are three high schoolers participating from The Menlo School, all from the 9th. grade.
    • There are five independents in this session, comprising three middle schoolers (two 6th., and one 8th. grader), and two high schoolers (an 11th. and a 12th. grader).

    Here's wishing each of these eight mentee-mentor pairs a wonderfully MAGICal journey, and we look forward to hearing all about their projects and learnings at the final presentation events in May!

    January – Week of 1

    MAGIC Mentoring Sessions Start at Partner Schools in the US and India

    The 2022-2023 MAGIC session kicked off at seven schools across the US and India this week.

    • Thomas Russell Middle School and Rancho Milpitas Middle School, both in the Milpitas Unified School District, in Milpitas, California, kicked off their sessions on January 3. There are five mentee-mentor pairs participating from these two schools, two from the seventh grade, and three from the eighth grade.
    • Marymount School in Manhattan, New York, kicked off on January 4, with three mentee-mentor pairs participating, comprising two eleventh graders and one twelfth grader.
    • Castilleja School in Palo Alto, California, started its session on January 5. Two mentee-mentor pairs are participating in this session, one sixth grader and one seventh grader.
    • Fieldston School in Bronx, New York, kicked off its session on January 5. There are three mentee-mentors participating, with two ninth graders and one eleventh grader.
    • Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, California, started its MAGIC session on January 6. There are two mentee-mentor pairs participating from this school, one tenth grader and one twelfth grader.
    • Finally, Amarjyoti School in India kicked off it session on January 7. There are two mentee-mentor pairs participating from Amarjoyti, comprising one eighth grader and one eleventh grader.

    Here's wishing each of the mentee-mentor pair a MAGICal journey through the next five months, culminating with them showcasing their projects in May 2023!

  • December – Week of 12

    The 2022-2023 MAGIC session kicks off at The Girls Middle School

    The 2022-2023 MAGIC mentoring session kicked off at The Girls' Middle School (GMS) in Palo Alto, California, on Dec 14th., 2022. GMS is a pilot partner for MAGIC, and this session marks the 15th. session of MAGIC at this school. Ten mentees have been accepted into the program this year — the highest ever since our pilot year (the 2008-2009 session), when ten mentees also participated. Three of the ten mentors for GMS this year are MAGIC mentee alums, two out of them being mentee graduates of the GMS pilot session!

    Wishing each of the ten mentee-mentor pairs a MAGICal mentoring session!

    November – Week of 14

    MAGIC Session starts at SKA High School for Girls

    The 2022-2023 MAGIC program kicked off earlier this week at the SKA High School for Girls in Long Island, New York. Eight girls, in grades 9 through 12, were each paired with an alumna of their school who work in the STEM field. This creates an extra MAGICal connection for the mentees and mentors! The session will end with presentations in May 2023.

    Cheers to a great year for each mentee-mentor partnership!

    October – Week of 01

    MAGIC Completes Its Pilot Session in India

    The 10-week pilot session of MAGIC in India at the Amarjyoti Saraswati International School concluded on September 30th. (October 1st. in India), with the three 9th. grader mentees presenting their work and experience, and showing demos of their projects. The final event was attended in India by the 9th. and 10th. grade students at the school, the school staff and parents, and in the US by the mentors and MAGIC staff. The MAGIC projects included a Language Translator App using MIT App Inventor, an Unquote Game using Android Studio, and a website using html/css/Javascript. More details can be found in this slide deck.

    Our heartfelt thanks to the mentors for their dedication and flexibility in mentoring halfway across the world. Special thanks to Ms. Ushma Jadav, a science teacher and MAGIC coordinator at Amarjyoti, for her support of the program, and to Ira Pramanick for running this session as the PM for MAGIC for Amarjyoti.

    Congratulations to each of the three mentee-mentor pairs on a job well done!

    September – Week of 12

    New MAGIC Pilot Session at Second Brazilian School

    This week saw the kick-off of a MAGIC pilot session at a new school in Brazil, the Colégio Paulo Freire school. The school is located in Jundiai, a city in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Three mentees from the school — a 7th. grader, a junior and a senior — will be mentored remotely by three mentors from the US.

    This pilot session will end in mid December, with a final presentation event. We are all very excited with this new engagement, and wish the mentors and mentees a MAGICal experience!

    August – Week of 28

    MAGIC Summer Session in the US Concludes

    Four mentees in the US and an intern completed their summer session with MAGIC with a final presentation event on August 28th, 2022. Each of the projects was impressive: the projects included a website to help seniors, building a catapult, research on ADHD, a website for resources on sexual assault, and storing and displaying past MAGIC projects for the general public.

    Details of the mentee/intern projects can be found in this slide deck, which also contains video demos of the projects. Many thanks to Aline Garcia, MAGIC PM for summer-2022, for coordinating the summer session so well, and to MAGIC board members Seema Shukla and Shami Ahuja for all their help with the final presentation event.

    Congratulations to each of the five mentee/intern-mentor pairs for a job well done!

    July – Week of 18

    MAGIC Pilot With School in India

    On July 19, MAGIC kicked off a pilot session with its second international partner school, this time in India, for the summer 2022 session.

    The partner school is Amarjyoti Saraswati International School, located in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, India.

    Four ninth graders were accepted into this pilot summer session, which will end with a final presentation event in the first weekend of October 2022. All four mentees are ninth graders, and their mentors are located in the US.

    Here's wishing the four mentee-mentor pairs a wonderful, MAGICal session!

    June – Week of 13 – 2

    MAGIC 2022 Summer Session Starts

    The summer 2022 session of MAGIC kicked off this week (on June 17) with five independent mentees participating in the ten week long session, from mid-June through the end of August. One of the mentees is a middle school student, and the remaining four are high school students.

    We wish each summer mentee a MAGICal mentoring session, and are looking forward to their final presentation event at the end of August.

    June – Week of 13 – 1

    The Conclusion of MAGIC's 2021-2022 Session

    MAGIC's first international partner school, Colegio Maristas Anjo Da Guarda (CMADG) had their final presentation to conclude their pilot session on June 14. Presenting at the event was one mentee, and an intern with MAGIC. The mentee's project was on correlating health care and investment data for leprosy treatment. The intern's project focused on social platforms to connect with MAGIC alumnae and share MAGIC news. Their presentations can be accessed here. Attending this event were the mentee, intern, mentors, families and friends, CMADG staff and students, and MAGIC staff.

    Congratulations to the mentee-mentor pair and the intern-mentor pair for a very successful session! Special thanks to Maria Tereza Pires Mafra, the CMADG MAGIC coordinator, and Ira Pramanick, the MAGIC PM for CMADG, for making this international partnership a success.

    June – Week of 01

    MAGIC Final Presentation Event at Ethical Culture Fieldston School

    The 2021-2022 MAGIC session at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School concluded with the two participating mentees — and one guest mentee, as well as a MAGIC intern — presenting their projects at a Final Presentation Event, held on June 1. Present at this virtual event were the mentors and mentees, families, friends, and Fieldston and MAGIC staff. Their projects ranged from data analysis on sneaker sales, to app development for a pre-existing website. All of the presentations can be found here.

    Congratulations to all the mentees and their mentors, and the MAGIC intern and her mentor, for an impressive set of projects. Special thanks to Kurt Vega, the Fieldston MAGIC coordinator, and to Hollis Roberts, the MAGIC PM, for making this session possible.

    May – Week of 30

    MAGIC Concludes its Second Session at Oxford Day Academy

    The 2021-2022 session of MAGIC at the Oxford Day Academy (ODA) in East Palo Alto, CA, concluded on May 31st., with the two participating mentees presenting their projects and experiences in the MAGIC session. One of the mentees was a sophomore and the other was a senior. Their projects included at-home fingerprinting, fingerprint identification using Machine Learning (ML) techniques combined with Scratch, and improving the design of the school's SCC (a student-led group) app to improve student engagement. Details of their presentations can be found in this slide deck.

    Many thanks to ODA head Latrice Bennett, ODA faculty member Molly Rice, and the MAGIC PM for ODA, Ira Pramanick, for their support of the session.

    A big congratulations to the two mentee-mentor pairs for a successful session!

    May – Week of 23 – 5

    MAGIC Session Concludes at Menlo School

    The 2021-2022 MAGIC session at Menlo School culminated with the three participating mentees presenting their projects at the Menlo MAGIC Final Presentation Event, held on Friday 27th. May. Two of the mentees are in the ninth grade, and the third one is in the eleventh grade. Their projects were:

    • The effects of sound and light pollution on plankton behavior.
    • Building an autonomous model car using Arduino Uno R3.
    • Food Allergies and Epigenetics.

    Congratulations to all three mentees and their mentors for an impressive set of projects, details of which can be found here.

    May – Week of 23 – 4

    MAGIC Session Concludes at Brooklyn LAB School

    The 2021-2022 MAGIC session at the Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School (LAB) in Brooklyn, NY, culminated with a final presentation event on May 26th. The event showcased the work of a mentee-mentor pair from the school, as well as that of a guest mentee-mentor pair from the Albemarle High School in Charlottesville, Virginia. The event was a virtual event, and attendees included mentees, their families and friends, Brooklyn LAB staff, mentors, and MAGIC staff. Each of the two mentees presented the project she worked on under the guidance of her mentor over the past four months. One project was on three different games in different programming languages, and the other was on a geographical feature mapping app. The presentations are available here.

    Congratulations to the two mentor-mentee pairs on a fantastic job! Many thanks to Yunqi Yang, the Brooklyn LAB MAGIC coordinator, and Hollis Roberts, the MAGIC PM, for their support of the program.

    May – Week of 23 – 3

    MAGIC Final Presentation Event at Marymount School of New York

    On May 25th., the four mentee-mentor pairs at Marymount School of New York wrapped up their 2021-2022 MAGIC session with a virtual final presentation event. Also included in the same presentation was one independent mentee-mentor pair from the Thomas Russell Middle School in Milpitas, California. Those present at the event included the mentees' families and friends, Marymount School staff, the mentors, and MAGIC staff. The projects ranged from various astronomy topics to a portable water desalination device. These presentations can be accessed here.

    Congratulations to all the mentor-mentee pairs for their dedication and amazing work! We also express our deep appreciation to Anne Kloimwieder, the Marymount MAGIC Coordinator, and Hollis Roberts, the MAGIC PM for Marymount, for contributing to the success of this MAGICal session!

    May – Week of 23 – 2

    MAGIC Session Concludes at Leap4Ed

    A virtual final presentation was held on May 24 to wrap up the MAGIC 2021-2022 session at Leap for Education (Leap4Ed). Present at this event were the mentee-mentor pairs, families, friends, Leap4Ed staff, and MAGIC staff. There was a total of four mentee-mentor pairs who presented the results of their hard work, carried out over the course of four months of guidance from the mentors. These projects ranged from the modeling of the construction of a house that can survive damage from natural disasters, to a website dedicated to sharing information on the immigration process. Details of these projects and mentee experiences can be found here.

    Congratulations to the four mentor-mentee pairs for their impressive projects and their huge accomplishment! Special thanks to Matthew Leonard and Chelsea Cimini, the Leap4Ed MAGIC Coordinators, and Hollis Roberts, the MAGIC PM for Leap4Ed, for a successful MAGIC session at Leap4Ed this year!

    May – Week of 23 – 1

    MAGIC 2021-2022 Session Concludes at SKA Hebrew Academy

    Six MAGIC mentee-mentor pairs concluded their mentoring session at the final presentation event held at the Stella K. Abraham (SKA) Hebrew Academy on the 23rd. of May. The event took place at the school premises, with remote audience members participating via Zoom. The audience consisted of mentees and mentors, mentee families, friends, school staff and MAGIC team members.

    The mentee projects included websites (on brain disorders, marine life and health information), a nutrition application, a mouse car using Arduino, and a tuned mass damper system. Details of these projects and mentee experiences can be found here.

    Many thanks to the SKA coordinator for MAGIC, Chana Glatt, and to the MAGIC PM Hollis Roberts, for a successful MAGIC session at SKA this year!

    May – Week of 16 – 3

    MAGIC Session Concludes at Castilleja School

    On May 19th., Castilleja School wrapped up its 2021-2022 MAGIC session with a virtual final presentation event. The three mentee-mentor pairs showed the results of four months of hard work, with the creation of an Online Foosball Game, an Animal Sounds Quiz Game, and a Changing Alphabet. These presentations can be found here. Those at the event included the mentees' families and friends, Castilleja Staff, the mentors, and MAGIC staff.

    Congratulations to the three mentor-mentee pairs for their dedication and amazing work! We also express our deep appreciation to Christina Courtney and Ann Greyson, the Castilleja MAGIC coordinators, and Ira Pramanick, the MAGIC PM for Castilleja, for their support of the MAGIC program.

    May – Week of 16 – 2

    Final Presentation Event at MUSD

    The 2021-2022 MAGIC final presentation event for the Milpitas Unified School District (MUSD), represented here by two middle schools, the Thomas Russell Middle School and the Rancho Milpitas Middle School, wrapped up on May 18th. This virtual event showcased projects, from "Talking Glasses" to "Colorful Animations", done by the four mentee-mentor pairs over the course of the past four months. In attendance at this event were the mentees, their families and friends, MUSD staff, mentors and MAGIC staff.

    These excellent presentations by the four mentor-mentee pairs highlighted their inspiring work! Special thanks to Sheetal Raina and Robert Jung (the MUSD MAGIC coordinators) and Hollis Roberts (the MAGIC PM for MUSD) for making the session possible.

    May – Week of 16 – 1

    MAGIC Session Concludes at Eastside College Preparatory School

    The 2021-2022 MAGIC session at Eastside College Preparatory School concluded with the four mentees from that school presenting their projects and experiences at the final presentation event held on May 17th., 2022. It was an impressive event, with the mentee projects including an iPhone music recommendation app, using Arduino Uno to build and program a clock, an Android app to adjust phone flashlight color to a longer wavelength to help turtle conservancy, and a website that explains the process of animation! The mentee presentations can be found here.

    Many thanks to the MAGIC coordinator at Eastside, Amairany Fuentes, and Eastside principal, Chris Bischof, for their support of the program, and to the MAGIC PM for Eastside, Ira Pramanick, for running the session at Eastside.

    May – Week of 09

    Final Presentation Event at The Girls' Middle School (GMS)

    The 2021-2022 MAGIC session at The Girls Middle School (GMS) culminated with a final presentation event on May 13th. The event was a virtual event, and attendees included mentees, their families and friends, GMS staff, mentors, and MAGIC staff. Each of the four mentees presented the project she worked on under the guidance of her mentor over the past four months. These presentations are available here.

    Congratulations to the four mentee-mentor pairs on a fantastic job! Many thanks to Tricia K., the GMS MAGIC coordinator, and Ira P., the MAGIC PM for GMS, for their support of the program.

    April – Week of 18

    MAGIC Featured at Harvard Alumni Expo

    MAGIC had the honor of being featured as one of the education organizations at the Harvard Alumni for Global Women's Empowerment Expo on Saturday, April 23, 2022. It was a wonderful opportunity to share MAGIC's mission and vision with the community, to meet other organizations in the space, and to recruit potential mentors, program managers, partner schools, and volunteers.

    You can find the slides from our presentation here. Please stay tuned for recordings from the event!

    February – Week of 14 – 2

    MAGIC Session Starts at Oxford Day Academy

    The last of the MAGIC 2021-2022 sessions kicked off on February 18, with two mentees participating from the Oxford Day Academy in East Palo Alto, CA. The mentees are in 10th. and 12th. grades respectively. One of the mentees is being mentored in Spanish, which is a first for MAGIC!

    Wishing Oxford mentee-mentor pairs a wonderful MAGICal journey, and looking forward to hearing about their projects/learnings at their final presentation event in May!

    February – Week of 14 – 1

    MAGIC Pilot Kickoff at its First International Partner School

    We are happy to announce a pilot mentoring session kickoff at MAGIC's first international partner school in Brazil, Colégio Marista Anjo da Guarda.

    The pilot has one mentee-mentor pair, a 10th. grader who will be mentored by a mentor located in New York, USA.

    Wishing this pilot pair a wonderful journey, and looking forward to many future sessions of MAGIC at this new partner!

    February – Week of 07

    2021-2022 MAGIC Pilot Session Kicks Off at Ethical Culture Fieldston School

    The 2021-2022 MAGIC session continues to grow with the start of a pilot mentoring session for two students at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in Bronx, NY. The mentees are high school students in the ninth and tenth grades. They will be learning app development and data analysis.

    This session will end with final presentation events in May 2022. We wish both mentor-mentee pairs a MAGICal journey over the coming months!

    January – Week of 17

    2021-2022 MAGIC Sessions Start for Independent Mentees

    The MAGIC mentoring session for the independent cohort of mentees kicked off over this week for three high schoolers. These three mentees are not from MAGIC partner schools, but applied to be mentees independently through our website. They are all located on the east coast, and are in ninth, tenth and eleventh grade respectively.

    We are looking forward to the accomplishments of these three mentees during their MAGIC session, and to their final presentation events in May.

    January – Week of 10

    2021-2022 MAGIC Sessions Kick Off at Castilleja School and Menlo School

    On January 13, Castilleja School in Palo Alto, California, kicked off their MAGIC session by welcoming three middle school girls to the 2021-2022 program: two sixth-graders and one eighth-grader. This year is the 9th. year that Castilleja has been a MAGIC partner, and if past Castilleja mentees are an indicator of how this group will learn and grow, we are looking forward to a fantastic session!

    Also on January 13, this year's MAGIC session started at Menlo School in Atherton, California. Menlo has three high schoolers participating in the program this year: two ninth graders and an eleventh grader. This session marks the 8th. MAGIC session at Menlo School. We wish each of the three mentee-mentor pairs a MAGICal journey, and are looking forward to hearing about their projects and experiences at the final presentation event in May!

    January – Week of 03

    2021-2022 MAGIC Session Kicks Off at the MUSD

    The 2021-2022 MAGIC session gained momentum this week as girls at the Milpitas Unified School District, from

    in Milpitas, California, attended their mentee kickoff on Thursday, January 6th. Five girls were selected to participate in this year's MUSD mentoring cohort: four seventh-graders and one eighth-grader.

    MAGIC mentoring sessions are starting right away, with final presentations planned for mid-May 2022. Best wishes for the session to all of the incredible mentees and their mentors!

  • December – Week of 20

    2021-2022 MAGIC Sessions Kick Off at Three More Schools

    This week, 2021-2022 MAGIC sessions were kicked off for eleven new mentees at the following schools:

    Mentees are middle and high school students, ranging from grades six through twelve. Student interests include astronomy, computer science, robotics, and engineering.

    The 2021-2022 session will end with final presentation events in May. We wish each mentor-mentee pair a MAGICal journey over the coming months!

    December – Week of 13

    2021-2022 MAGIC Session Kicks Off at Eastside

    On December 13th., the Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, California, kicked off its 2021-2022 session by welcoming six fantastic mentees into the MAGIC program. This year’s mentees are high school students in grades nine through twelve interested in pursuing various STEM careers.

    The 2021-2022 session will end with final presentation events in May 2022. We wish each mentor-mentee pair a MAGICal journey over the coming months!

    December – Week of 06

    2021-2022 MAGIC Session Kicks Off at Girls' Middle School

    MAGIC kicked off its 14th. year of mentoring at its first partner school, The Girls Middle School (GMS) in Palo Alto, California, on December 7th., 2021. This year's cohort of GMS consists of four mentees: two seventh graders and two eighth graders.

    Wishing each of these four mentees a wonderful MAGICal journey, and looking forward to hearing about all they accomplish over the next five months at the final presentation event in May 2022.

    November – Week of 08

    MAGIC Mentee Alumnae Attend Google STEM Event

    On November 10, Google Women@Health and Google WiNS Outreach partnered with MAGIC to host a virtual STEM event for fourteen MAGIC mentee alumnae. High school girls from around the globe attended the fun-filled gathering that included:

    • A keynote talk in which the girls learned about Data Centers: where they are located, how they work, and what it's like to work there.
    • A "knowledge-share" on the ins and outs of fiber optics, and how they are used to transmit data from data centers worldwide back to Google.
    • An in-depth look at "What happens when one does a 'Google Search'".
    • Breakout rooms where the girls worked (virtually) alongside a Googler to build their very own Light Chasing Robot kit, or participate in an AI-ML workshop.
    • Q&A time to learn more about the field of technology.

    November – Week of 01

    2021-2022 MAGIC Session Kicks Off at SKA

    The 2021-2022 session of MAGIC is off to a great start, with seven mentees at the SKA Hebrew Academy in Long Island, New York. The mentees are high school students in grades nine through eleven, interested in pursuing a variety of STEM careers.

    The 2021-2022 session will end with final presentation events in May 2022. We wish each mentor-mentee pair a MAGICal journey over the coming months!

    August

    Summer 2021 MAGIC Session Comes to an End

    The summer 2021 session of MAGIC came to a close with two final presentation events held via Zoom, where the eleven mentees and the MAGIC summer intern presented the work they had done over the past eight to ten weeks. Each event was attended by the mentees, the intern, mentors, mentee family members and friends, and mentee school teachers. Each presenter, along with their mentor, was interviewed about their experience. We will soon be publishing recordings of their presentations and interviews on our LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter pages.

    Below are the details of the closing sessions:

    • Final Presentation Date: Sunday, August 29, 2021
    • Final Presentation Date: Monday, August 30, 2021

    The mentee project topics were from various areas of STEM, ranging from building websites and apps, to research on teen mental health and the female reproductive system.

    Congratulations to each of the presenters and their mentor for an outstanding job!

    June

    Summer 2021 MAGIC Session Kicks Off in Mid-June

    The 2021 summer session of MAGIC kicked off to a great start with eleven mentees and one intern-mentee selected into the program. One of the mentees is a middle schooler, and the remaining ten mentees and the intern are high school students.

    There are two international mentees in the program this session: one high school student from Brazil, and another high schooler from India. The remaining mentees are based in the US from the states of California, Florida, New Jersey, New York, Texas and Washington.

    The summer session will end with final presentation events at the end of August. Here's wishing each mentor-mentee pair a MAGICal journey during the next ten weeks!

    May

    2020-2021 MAGIC Sessions Come to an End

    The month of May saw the culmination of MAGIC mentoring sessions across ten partner schools/centers across the US, as well as three high school independents (mentees from non-partner schools who applied through our website). Forty-three mentees completed this mentoring session, each of them doing a fantastic job of their projects under the guidance of their mentors. The mentees gave talks on their MAGIC work and experience at the final presentation events at their school/center, as well as did a demo of their project.

    Below are the details of the sessions at each of the partners'.

    • Leap4Ed, Salem, Massachusetts:
      • School Coordinator(s): Steve Becroft and Madison Seligman
      • MAGIC Program Manager: Kim Fujikawa
      • Number of pairs of mentors/mentees: Six
      • Final Presentation Date: May 13, 2021
      • Presentation Slides
    • The Girls' Middle School, Palo Alto, California:
      • School Coordinator(s): Tricia Kellison
      • MAGIC Program Manager: Ira Pramanick
      • Number of pairs of mentors/mentees: Six
      • Final Presentation Date: May 18, 2021
      • Presentation Slides
    • Eastside College Preparatory School, East Palo Alto, California:
      • School Coordinator(s): Karla Garcia
      • MAGIC Program Manager: Ira Pramanick
      • Number of pairs of mentors/mentees: Two, plus one independent
      • Final Presentation Date: May 19, 2021
      • Presentation Slides
    • Rancho Milpitas Middle School and Thomas Russell Middle School
      (of the Milpitas Unified School District), Milpitas, California:
      • School Coordinator(s): Robert Jung and Sheetal Raina
      • MAGIC Program Manager: Ira Pramanick
      • Number of pairs of mentors/mentees: Seven
      • Final Presentation Date: May 20, 2021
      • Presentation Slides
    • Castilleja School, Palo Alto, California:
      • School Coordinator(s): Christina Courtney and Ann Greyson
      • MAGIC Program Manager: Ian Gulliver
      • Number of pairs of mentors/mentees: Three
      • Final Presentation Date: May 21, 2021
      • Presentation Slides
    • Menlo School, Atherton, California:
      • School Coordinator(s): Nina Arnberg
      • MAGIC Program Manager: Andrew Farmer
      • Number of pairs of mentors/mentees: Three
      • Final Presentation Date: May 24, 2021
      • Presentation Slides
    • Marymount School of New York, New York City, New York:
      • School Coordinator(s): Jessica Genter
      • MAGIC Program Manager: Ira Pramanick and Ben Lunzer
      • Number of pairs of mentors/mentees: Four, plus one independent
      • Final Presentation Date: May 25, 2021
      • Presentation Slides
    • Stella K Abraham School (SKA), Long Island, New York:
      • School Coordinator(s): Chana Glatt
      • MAGIC Program Manager: Ira Pramanick and Ben Lunzer
      • Number of pairs of mentors/mentees: Seven
      • Final Presentation Date: May 26, 2021
      • Presentation Slides
    • Brooklyn LAB Charter School, Brooklyn, New York:
      • School Coordinator(s): Kelly King
      • MAGIC Program Manager: Ira Pramanick and Ben Lunzer
      • Number of pairs of mentors/mentees: Two, plus one independent
      • Final Presentation Date: May 27, 2021
      • Presentation Slides

    Congratulations to all the mentee-mentor pairs on a job well done! Many thanks to the MAGIC Program Managers, school coordinators, and other volunteers for helping to make this another great session of MAGIC!

    January – February

    MAGIC Sessions Start for the Remaining Partners/Mentees

    The second round of 2020-2021 MAGIC sessions kicked off at the remaining MAGIC partner schools and for three independent mentees over the months of January and February. Each group of mentees accepted into this session is listed below:

    • January 7th: Menlo School: Three high schoolers were accepted into the program.
    • January 8th: Castilleja School: Three middle schoolers were accepted into the program.
    • January 14th: Leap For Education (Leap4Ed): Nine mentees were accepted into the program; three are high schoolers, and six are middle schoolers.
    • January 13th and February 2nd: Rancho Milpitas Middle School and Thomas Russell Middle School, respectively: A total of seven middle school mentees were accepted into the program.
    • Three independents — mentees who do not attend one of MAGIC's partner schools, but applied directly through our website — were also accepted into the program. All three are high schoolers, one each from the west and east coasts of the US, while our third independent mentee is from Brazil.

    Wishing the entire set of MAGIC mentees for 2020-2021 a very MAGICal mentoring journey!

  • December – Week of 14

    MAGIC Session Kicks off for Two More Schools

    The 2020-21 session of MAGIC kicked off at two additional schools this week.

    On Monday December 14 was the kickoff for a new partner of MAGIC on the east coast, the Brooklyn LAB Charter School in Brooklyn, New York. Three high schoolers from this school are participating in this pilot session — a ninth grader and two tenth graders.

    MAGIC also kicked off a session at one of MAGIC's existing partners on the west coast, the Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, on Friday December 18. The two mentees participating this year from Eastside are both tenth graders.

    Here's wishing a MAGICal journey to both these groups of mentees!

    December – Week of 07

    MAGIC Session Kicks off for Two Additional Groups of Mentees

    The 2020-21 session of MAGIC is off to a great start at our oldest partner school, The Girls' Middle School in Palo Alto, California, with a mentee kickoff on Friday, December 11th. Seven girls have been selected to participate in this year's mentoring session: three sixth graders, two seventh graders, and two eighth graders.

    The second phase of the pilot MAGIC session, at Marymount School in Manhattan, New York, also kicked off on Friday, December 11th., with two additional mentees accepted into the program. Both of these mentees are tenth graders.

    Both these sets of mentees will start their mentoring session in January 2021.

    November – Week of 16

    2020-2021 MAGIC Mentoring Kicks Off on the East Coast

    The MAGIC mentoring for the 2020-2021 session is off to a great start with the kickoffs at the following two schools on the east coast:

    Marymount is a new MAGIC partner, and the pilot MAGIC session there will proceed in two phases. The first phase kicked off earlier this month, with two mentees participating in the program. Both the mentees are in the 11th. grade. The second phase will kick off in December. Both phases will end with a final presentation event in May 2021.

    The 2020-21 session is the fourth MAGIC session at SKA. Seven mentees have been selected into the program this year, and are from grades 9 through 12. The session will end with a final presentation event in May 2021.

    Here's wishing each mentee-mentor pair a great MAGICal experience!

    November – Week of 02

    MAGIC Mentee Alumnae Attend Google Virtual Field Trip

    Google's Women@Health team partnered with MAGIC to host a virtual field trip for a group of MAGIC mentee alumnae, who are currently high school students. The event was held on the afternoon of Friday, November 6th. Eleven mentee alumnae attended this event. It was a fun-packed afternoon, and included:

    • a keynote speech by an exec,
    • a Zumba session,
    • an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session, hosted by a software engineer and a pediatrician, and
    • an interactive kit building activity, conducted by two software engineers (each mentee had been sent a space solar robotic kit prior to the event).

    Each mentee alum had a wonderful experience.

    Thank you Google's Women@Health team for hosting this amazing event for the girls!

    August – Week of 24

    MAGIC Founder Delivers Keynote Address at Hackathon

    MAGIC founder Ira Pramanick was invited to give a keynote at an online hackathon hosted by NewtonHACKS on August 29th, 2020. This was an all-day event for beginner programmers entering Grades 6-12. Ira was invited to talk about her experience as a woman in CS, and how she overcame the challenges/struggles that faced her. She weaved her story into this slide deck that she created for her keynote.

    August – Week of 24

    2020 MAGIC Summer Session Concludes

    Eight mentees and a summer intern presented their work over the summer session, spanning ten weeks of their work under the guidance of their mentors, on Friday, August 28th. This final presentation event was a virtual Zoom event, and the audience consisted of mentees' families and teachers, mentors, board members and a few interested members of the community at large. The mentee projects included:

    • An Android app to help people buy essentials during the COVID-19 pandemic.
    • Collection and analysis results on teenage mental health during social isolation.
    • An Arduino-based heart rate monitor to aid safe driving.
    • A website for educating middle- and high-school students on COVID-19.
    • Collection and analysis of data to understand the connection between asthma and genetics.
    • Analyzing publicly available Covid-19 data to understand its correlation to race in New York City.
    • A website of games, built using React and Machine Learning.
    • Building a neural network to diagnose Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
    • Add features to, and make ready for launching, a past-mentee projects website.

    The slide deck of the mentee presentations can be found here.

    Recordings of the mentee presentations and mentee-mentor interviews will be published on our LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter pages in the near future!

    Congratulations to all the mentees and mentors, and our intern, on a fantastic job!

    June – Week of 15

    2020 MAGIC Summer Session Off to a Great Start

    The summer 2020 session of MAGIC mentoring kicked off in the week of June 15th, with ten mentees participating in the program, ranging from a rising 7th. grader, all the way to a high school graduate (rising freshman in college). Two of the mentees are from New York, one from Florida, one from Washington, and the remaining six from the San Francisco bay area. The ten summer mentors are located in various parts of the US, including New York, Ohio, Washington DC, Washington, and the San Francisco bay area.

    The summer session will be ten weeks long, and will culminate with a final presentation event at the end of August.

    Wishing a MAGICal journey to the ten mentee-mentor pairs!

    June – Week of 01

    2019-2020 MAGIC Session Concludes!

    The 2019-20 MAGIC mentoring session concluded with final presentation events at all the MAGIC partners, starting from May 13th., all the way to June 1st. The final events were online events, using Zoom. Each mentee presented her learning experience and her project, and did a demo of her project. Each mentee-mentor pair was interviewed on the same day regarding their experience. Videos of the presentation and interviews will be published in the near future to MAGIC's LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter accounts.

    A total of thirty-one mentees graduated during this session of MAGIC, across nine partner schools and three independent schools. The partner schools were located in the SF Bay Area, Los Angeles, and New York City.

    Many thanks to the MAGIC partners for their support of the program, notably to the MAGIC coordinators at these schools:

    MAGIC is grateful to the MAGIC Program Managers (PMs) for ensuring the success of the program by taking care of each of the sessions with a great deal of attention and detail:

    MAGIC would also like to extend its heartfelt thanks to all the volunteers who helped interview the mentor-mentee pairs at the final event. Last, but not least, MAGIC is indebted to Ian Gulliver, for taking care of all the online final event logistics and the recording and production of the presentation and interview videos.

    A huge congratulations to all the mentees and mentors on an outstanding job!

    November 2019 – February 2020

    2019-2020 MAGIC Session Starts!

    The 2019-2020 session of MAGIC has completed its kickoff at its various partner schools, with the first of the series of kickoffs taking place in November 2019, and the last kickoff taking place in February 2020. We have nine partner schools participating this year, and three independent mentees as well. Out of the nine partners, two are in New York, one in Los Angeles, and six in the bay area. A total of thirty-nine mentees are participating in this session — nineteen of these mentees are high school students and twenty are middle school students. The number of remote mentor-mentee pairs is approximately fifty percent of all the pairs.

    The partners are:

    The three independent mentees are from the following high schools in the bay area:

    Good luck to each mentee-mentor pair on their MAGICal journey!

  • September – Week of 02

    MAGIC 2019 Summer Session Comes to a Close!

    Ten MAGIC mentees who participated in the 2019 summer mentoring session presented their work and demonstrated their projects at the final presentation event on Friday, September 6th. This event was held at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. The audience consisted of mentors, mentee families, teachers and members of the MAGIC staff.

    The mentee-mentor pairs and their projects were as follows:

    • Isha G (7th grade), mentored by Elissa M, built a food waste website
    • Nithya P (7th grade), mentored by Yvonne Z, built an Android app for providing food to homeless people
    • Saakshi C (9th grade), mentored by Komal G, built a chat service for food donation, for restaurants and nonprofits
    • Sophia M (9th grade), mentored by Shilpa G, built a Simon game using Python
    • Aruna G (10th grade), mentored by Sonali P, conducted research on biodiversity
    • Kimberly N (10th grade), mentored by Smriti P, built a personal website
    • Leslie G-S (10th grade), mentored by Sneha K, built a personal finance tracker iOS app
    • Seema L (12th grade), mentored by Ria S, designed a photo sharing iOS app to connect students
    • Xiomara Q (12th grade), mentored by Jo Y, built a website for providing information to teenagers
    • Ruchi K (12th grade), mentored by Anne Z, designed the UI for, and then built the MAGIC mentee projects website; this work was done as part of her summer internship with MAGIC

    The slides from the presentation can be found here.

    Many thanks to the two MAGIC PMs, Jannie Wu and Ira Pramanick, for managing the summer session, and a huge thanks to Google for hosting the final presentation event.

    Congratulations to the mentees and their mentors for a job superbly done!

    June – Week of 10

    MAGIC 2019 Summer Session Off To A Great Start!

    The 2019 MAGIC summer session kicked off on the 15th of June with ten mentees participating in this session. Two of the mentees are rising 7th graders, and the remaining eight are high school students. Half of the mentees have remote mentors.

    MAGIC is piloting its program with a new partner this summer: The Oxford Day Academy in East Palo Alto, CA, from which one mentee is participating in the program. Another mentee is from Eastside College Preparatory, one of MAGIC's existing partners. The remaining eight mentees are independents (mentees who applied directly through our website, and aren't affiliated with any of our existing partner schools).

    Good luck to the ten mentee-mentor pairs in their MAGICal journey this summer!

    June – Week of 03

    Last Final Presentation Event of 2018-2019 Takes Place

    The last of the final presentation events for the MAGIC 2018-2019 sessions took place on Tuesday, June 4th, at The Salem Academy Charter School in Salem, Massachusetts. This mentoring session was accomplished through MAGIC's partnership with the Leap for Education (Leap4Ed) organization.

    Five middle school mentees presented their projects and demos to an audience consisting of 7th and 8th grade students of Salem Academy, the school staff, MAGIC mentors and MAGIC staff. The mentee-mentor pairs and their projects are as follows:

    • Emma S (6th grade), mentored by Sandra H, made a game using Scratch.
    • Lyda C (7th grade), mentored by Michelle D, created a website on climate change.
    • Maleah L (7th grade), mentored by Jess W, created an LGBTQ website.
    • Skylar W (7th grade), mentored by Smriti P, built a robot.
    • Grace T (8th grade), mentored by Stephanie C, built the model of a solar sensor car using Arduino and Python.

    Their presentation slides can be found here.

    Many thanks to Kayla Dorst, the LEAP for Education director and the MAGIC coordinator at Leap4Ed, and Kim Fujikawa, the MAGIC PM for Leap4Ed, for working hard to ensure a successful mentoring session at Leap4Ed.

    A huge congratulations to the mentees and their mentors for a job well done!

    May – Week of 27

    MAGIC Closing Events at Three Schools This Week

    Two schools on the west coast and a school on the east coast concluded their MAGIC sessions with final presentation events in the week of May 27th

    May 29 Events

    On May 29th, seven high school mentees from the Stella K. Abraham High School (SKA) in Long Beach, New York, gave presentations and demos of their MAGIC projects to an audience consisting of their peers, school staff, mentors, parents and families, and MAGIC staff. These mentee-mentor pairs and their projects are as follows:

    • Chani R (9th grade) mentored by Hindi L, worked on a clinical research project to study the impact of smart-phones and TV on the development of children.
    • Anna L (10th grade) mentored by Leah E, built a website to educate the public about the dangers of vaping.
    • Ariella B (10th grade) mentored by Bishakha M, worked on scientific research on resistance to antibiotics.
    • Ayelet T (10th grade) mentored by Gittie A, built a website to translate American Sign Language (ASL) into English.
    • Riki P (10th grade) mentored by Shami A, built an application to learn and quiz about the endocrine system.
    • Priva H (10th grade) mentored by Mindy L, worked on alcohol detection using image analysis and color changing methods.
    • Eliana M (12th grade) mentored by Yan G, built a hydro-car model to study how a fuel cell works.

    Their final presentations can be found in this slide deck.

    May 30 Events

    On May 30th, six middle school mentees from the two Milpitas Unified School District (MUSD) middle schools in Milpitas, California, namely, Rancho Milpitas Middle School and Thomas Russell Middle School, presented their MAGIC projects. The audience consisted of mentees and mentors, parents and families, MUSD administrators, and MAGIC staff. These six mentee-mentor pairs and their projects are as follows:

    • Ava W (7th grade) mentored by Jaelle S, built a Harry Potter Alexa trivia game using Amazon Web Services (AWS).
    • Michelle N (7th grade) mentored by Ellen Y, built a mechanical arm with attached claw, functioned by Arduino and an Android application.
    • Kitana L (7th grade) mentored by Anurupa R, used SketchUp to build models of houses, and then designed and built a 3D mini house with circuits.
    • Sheen R (7th grade) mentored by Shami A, made a video game using Scratch.
    • Shreya N (8th grade) mentored by Iryna B, researched multiple aspects of exo-planets, including analyzing huge amounts of astronomy data on exo-planets to identify the location of stars.
    • Serene J (8th grade) mentored by Divina V, built an online game, using HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery.

    At this event, two guest mentees also presented their work:

    • Melanie R (10th grade), a mentee from the National Coalition of Black Women (NCBW), mentored by Venmathi G, built a desktop application using Arduino and Python for checking a person's stress level.
    • Chloe Wang (11th grade), an independent mentee mentored by Soja M, created a robot to draw Chinese characters.

    The presentations of these eight mentees at the MUSD final event can be found in this slide deck.

    Many thanks to the SKA coordinator Chana Glatt, MUSD coordinator Sheetal Raina, MAGIC PM for SKA Jennifer Horowitz, MAGIC PM for MUSD Jiawei Zhang, MAGIC PM for NCBW Michelle Garcia, and MAGIC PM for Independents Ira Pramanick, for their hard work and support of their MAGIC sessions.

    A huge congratulations to all the mentees and their mentors for a fantastic job!

    May – Week of 20

    Two MAGIC Closing Events this Week

    Two additional sets of MAGIC mentees concluded their mentoring sessions with final presentation events in the week of May 20.

    On the 20th, four middle school mentees from The Ann Richards School presented their MAGIC projects to their middle school peers, school staff, their mentors and MAGIC staff. The mentee-mentor pairs and their projects were as follows:

    • Camila C (Grade 6), mentored by Cher S, built a website about climate change.
    • Jayden M (Grade 6), mentored by Emily T, built a website on plants.
    • Triana D (Grade 6), mentored by Anouk S, built a blogs website.
    • Amrutha M (Grade 7), mentored by Madhura L, made a graphic design model of an airplane.

    Here's a link to the presentation slides from the event. The MAGIC program at Ann Richards was coordinated by Jill Dicuffa from Ann Richards, with Cherie Shedd serving as the PM from the MAGIC end.

    On May 22nd, an independent (that is, not from one of the MAGIC partner schools) mentee presented her project to her peers at her school. Kamna K, a seventh grader, combined her love of architecture and her goal of learning programming into her MAGIC project, and built a website to showcase her SketchUp house models. Kamna was mentored by Ira Pramanick. Here's a link to her slides.

    Hearty congratulations to all the mentees and mentors for a fabulous job!

    May – Week of 13

    MAGIC Sessions Conclude at Four More Schools

    The week of May 13 marked the closing events at four MAGIC partner schools:

    In all, fifteen mentees participated in these closing presentation events. Five of these mentees were high school students, and ten were middle school students. About half of these mentees were remotely mentored. Two mentees, one from our National Coalition of Black Women (NCBW) partner, and the other an independent mentee, also presented their projects at GMS and Castilleja respectively.

    Listed below are the event details, with the links to the final presentation slides for each event, and the mentee-mentor pairs at those events:

    • Castilleja presentation (slides):
      • Claire S (6th grader), mentored by Lakshmi KP, built an Arduino game
      • Samantha S (7th grader), mentored by Melissa M, built a robot
      • Sophia T (7th grader), mentored by Laney S, built an app for recognizing plants
      • Aasiya M (7th grader), mentored by Raji S, worked on techniques for making music
      • Ella N (9th grader), mentored by Naina T, built a housing market app
    • GMS presentation (slides):
      • Jane W (6th grader), mentored by Ellen B, built a website
      • Julia D (6th grader), mentored by Ranjitha K, built a video game
      • Sydney (6th grader), mentored by Pi-Chuan C, worked on cryptography
      • Alexa N (7th grader), mentored by Juhi B, built a website
      • Aria K (7th grader), mentored by Himica K, built a website/app
      • Laura C (8th grader), mentored by Anne Z, built a video game
      • Alexis H (10th grader), mentored by Theresa C, worked on the history of cameras
    • MSH presentation (slides):
      • Leah C (10th grader), mentored by Julia H, built a temperature sensor and a website
    • Deep Run presentation (slides):
      • Rosanne W (9th grader), mentored by Sunanda S, built a hangman game
      • Vaishnavi R (10th grader), mentored by Deepa K, built a book catalog

    Many thanks to the Coordinators for MAGIC at the schools:

    • Ann Greyson (Castilleja)
    • Tricia Kellison (GMS)
    • Aliza Feder (MSH)
    • Nirali Jantrania (Deep Run)

    and to the MAGIC Program Managers for these schools:

    • Ian Gulliver (Castilleja)
    • Ira Pramanick (GMS)
    • Jennifer Horowitz (MSH)
    • Jannie Wu (Deep Run)
    • Michelle Garcia (NCBW)

    A huge congratulations to each of the fifteen mentee-mentor pairs for their superb work!

    April – Week of 29

    MAGIC Session at Menlo School Concludes

    The MAGIC mentoring session at Menlo School in Atherton, CA, concluded this past week, with a final presentation event held on Thursday, May 2nd. Three mentees from Menlo, two sixth graders and a ninth grader, presented their work and showed demos of their projects to an audience consisting of Menlo middle school students, Menlo faculty, and members of the MAGIC core team. The mentee-mentor pairs and their projects were as follows:

    • Ruchi M (Grade 6), mentored by Neelam K, built a virtual drum set using Java.
    • Alexa M (Grade 6), mentored by Adele L, designed a website for senior citizens and wrote a grant proposal for it.
    • Grace T (Grade 9), mentored by Catherine W, designed and implemented style transfer using Machine Learning techniques.

    Here's a link to the presentation slides from the event. The MAGIC program at Menlo was coordinated by Nina A, the M-BEST Director at Menlo, with Ira Pramanick serving as the PM from the MAGIC end.

    Kudos to each mentee and mentor for a job well done!

    January

    Spring 2019 MAGIC Session Kicks Off

    The Spring 2019 session for MAGIC kicked off this month at the following MAGIC partner organizations:

    Additionally, we have accepted three mentees who do not belong to any of our partners, but had applied online. Two of these mentees are from the west coast, and one from the east coast. The Spring session for MAGIC will culminate in the May/June time frame, with final presentation events at the partner sites.

    About seventy-five percent of the Spring session mentees are middle school students. The remaining twenty-five percent are high school students, from the Menlo School and the YULA Girls' High School, and one of the high school students is an independent mentee. About eighty percent of the mentor-mentee pairs of the Spring session will be meeting remotely.

    Good luck to all the mentor-mentee pairs as they embark upon their MAGICal journeys this spring!

  • December

    MAGIC 2018-2019 Off to a Great Start!

    MAGIC 2018-19 has been off to a great start with sessions kicking off at several of our partners on the west and east coasts of the US, including the states of California, New York, and Virginia. These partners are:

    About 60% of these mentees are middle schoolers, and the remaining 40% are high school students. Our mentors are located in various parts of the US; about 50% of our mentees are being remotely mentored!

    We are also in the process of kicking off spring mentoring in our other partner schools/centers in Massachusetts, Texas and the California Bay Area.

    As we look forward to another fruitful year of MAGIC, we would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to all our partners, mentors and volunteers for their strong support of the program!

    September

    MAGIC Summer Session Comes to a Close!

    The 2018 summer session of MAGIC came to a close with two final presentation events, one on the west coast and the other on the east coast.

    The east coast final presentation event took place on Thursday, September 13th., and was hosted by Kayla Dorst, Director of Program and Innovation at the Leap for Education (Leap4Ed) organization in Salem, MA. Three mentees from three schools presented at this event. Special thanks to Kayla for integrating Jalyn M. from Southern California into the east coast presentation line up.

    • Jalyn M. from Thousand Oaks High School in Southern California; Jalyn was remotely mentored by Jen T. from USAA in San Antonio, TX.
    • Jessica V. from Saltonstall School in Salem, MA; Jessica was remotely mentored by Stephanie C. from MIT in Boston, MA.
    • Kyla B. from Salem High School in Salem, MA; Kyla was remotely mentored by Juhi B. from Rice University in Houston, TX.

    The west coast final presentation event was hosted by the Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, CA, on Friday, the 14th. of September. Six mentees from four schools presented at this event:

    • Alexa T. from the Menlo School in Atherton, CA; Alexa was remotely mentored by Shruthi B. from the University of Chicago, IL.
    • Gabriella D. from Notre Dame High School in San Jose, CA; Gabriella was mentored by Melissa M. from Varian Medical Systems in San Jose, CA.
    • Mariana H. from Notre Dame High School in San Jose, CA; Mariana was mentored by Anne Z. from Honeycomb Data in Santa Clara, CA.
    • Priscilla V. from Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, CA; Priscilla was remotely mentored by Claire B. from the University of California in Santa Cruz, CA.
    • Shravya S. from the Deep Run High School in Glen Allen, VA; Shravya was remotely mentored by Naina T. from DNANexus in Mountain View, CA.
    • Shreya B. from Notre Dame High School in San Jose, CA; Shreya was mentored by Smriti P. from MIT, MA, who was also a Google intern during the summer.

    Many thanks to the MAGIC coordinators for a successful summer session: Ira Pramanick for Menlo and Independents, Jannie Wu for Eastside, Kim Fujikawa for Leap4Ed, and Shami Ahuja for Notre Dame.

    Kudos to all the mentees for a very impressive set of presentations, demos and their projects, and to their mentors for guiding them in their MAGICal journey this summer!

    July

    MAGIC Summer Mentoring Kicks Off

    As in the past few summers, MAGIC has offered a limited number of mentoring slots this summer. Eight mentees have been accepted in the program this summer, three from the east coast and five from the west coast.

    MAGIC is pleased to pilot a partnership this summer with Notre Dame High School in San Jose, with three high schoolers participating as mentees. The other two west coast mentees are from our existing partner schools, the Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, CA, and the Menlo School in Atherton, CA. From the east coast, two of the mentees are from MAGIC's existing partner organization, Leap for Education, based in Salem, MA, and the third mentee comes from an independent, non-partner school channel, and is located in Virginia.

    Seven of the mentees are high schoolers, and one is from the sixth grade. Five of the mentees are being remotely mentored, and the remaining three have face-to-face mentoring meetings.

    All the best to the summer mentee-mentor pairs for a fruitful mentoring session. We cannot wait to hear you present your projects at the end of the summer session!

    June – Week of 18

    The Last of the MAGIC End-of-Year Presentations Conclude

    The last of the 2017-18 mentee presentations for MAGIC was held on Monday, June 18th., at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA. The mentees who presented were from non-partner schools, and had applied to the MAGIC program via the website. Many of these mentees are located in various parts of the US, as are many of the mentors, and traveled to the bay area for this presentation. Four of the mentees were middle schoolers and three were high schoolers. Here are the slides presented at the event.

    The seven mentee-mentor pairs and their projects were as follows:

    • Svan L (mentee), Anouk S (mentor), Apps Using MIT AppInventor
    • Akshaya NR (mentee), Sandra H (mentor), Community Service Website
    • Madison S (mentee), Neelam K (mentor), Core Java Apps
    • Aishani M (mentee), Meera V (mentor), AWS Photo Recognition
    • Gracie M (mentee), Laney S (mentor), Grocery Store App for the Visually Impaired
    • Ishani S (mentee), Melissa M (mentor), Squarefinder: Creating QR Codes
    • Jalyn M (mentee), Jen T (mentor), Concussion Symptom Tracking Mobile App

    These pairs were coordinated by Ira Pramanick and Kim Fujikawa from MAGIC.

    A huge congratulations to all the mentees and their mentors for a job superbly done!

    MAGIC is grateful to the Tech Museum for sponsoring this event, and is looking forward to a fruitful partnership in the future!

    June – Week of 04

    MAGIC End-of-Year Presentations in Southern California

    MAGIC’s end-of-year presentations continued in Southern California at the Yeshiva of Los Angeles Girls High School (YULA) on Friday June 8th. The presentations were held in the YULA STEAM Lab with an audience that included the YULA STEM Club, parents of the mentees, YULA administrative staff, and mentors (both in person and remote). Four mentees completed their MAGIC program: Jennifer P., Natalie S., Eliana S., and Elisheva G. Their mentors were Jessica W., Joan D., Iryna B., and Adele L. respectively. Each of the mentees presented their final projects, as outlined below. The presentation slides can be viewed here.

    • Jennifer’s interest in web application development led her to both defend and attack a website utilizing virtual machines to simulate offensive and defensive computers.
    • Natalie conceptualized and developed a website that examines the causes, effects and relievers of stress.
    • Eliana focused on research into factors that influence how well people remember words. She also explored many areas of science, including artificial intelligence and embryology.
    • Elisheva created an app that can detect traumatic impact from changes in temperature, atmospheric pressure, etc., and then send out a signal to call for help.

    Special thanks to Jordana Wertheimer, Director of Student Life and Leadership, for hosting the presentation at YULA. This session at YULA was coordinated by Kim Fujikawa from MAGIC.

    May – Week of 20

    MAGIC End-of-Year Presentations Continue

    The week of May 20th. witnessed three final presentation events for MAGIC.

    • The first one was held on Monday, May 21st., at the offices of the Milpitas Unified School District (MUSD). The final event was for a pilot session of MAGIC at MUSD, in which six middle schoolers from Thomas Russell Middle School and Rancho Middle School were selected and paired with a MAGIC mentor each. Four of the mentors were located in the bay area, one in Santa Cruz, and the sixth one in New Orleans. The mentoring was therefore face to face or remote, depending on the location of the mentor. The six mentees were Aaryani V., Annabelle L., Anvesha T., Maria V., Meriam S. and Theonne M., and the mentors were Anurupa Rao, Jaelle Scheuerman, Katherine Dale, Madhura Limaye, Shami Ahuja and Soja Marie-Morgens. This MAGIC session was jointly coordinated by Robert Jung from MUSD and Linsday Rawitscher from MAGIC, with significant help from Shami Ahuja from MAGIC. Slides of the final presentation can be found here.
    • The second final event was held at The Girls' Middle School (GMS) on Tuesday, May 22nd. Five middle school girls from GMS were selected into the program: Anjali U., Ella T., Leslie S., Meghana I., and Mia T. All five of the mentors in this case were located in the bay area, and the mentoring was mostly face to face. The mentors were Dhana Shunmugasundram, Pi-chuan Chang, Priscilla Pham, Ranjitha Kulkarni, and Tasneem Dalal.
    • This event marked the completion of a ten-year partnership between GMS and MAGIC. GMS was the initial partner for MAGIC in its pilot year, the 2008-2009 session. Since then, MAGIC has been fortunate to have GMS as a partner each year. To date, MAGIC has mentored more than 60 girls from GMS, and looks forward to many more years of partnership in the future. This year's session was jointly coordinated by Tricia Kellison from GMS and Ira Pramanick from MAGIC. Slides of the presentation from this year can be found here.
    • The last final presentation event of the week was held on Thursday May 24th. at the Stella K Abraham High School (SKA) in New York. The partnership between MAGIC and SKA was formed in the fall of 2017, and SKA is the first partner of MAGIC in the state of New York! Five high schooler mentees were selected into this pilot session of MAGIC at SKA, and they are: Abigail R., Atara I., Kayla E., Meira S., and Priva H. All five mentees were remotely mentored by mentors located outside New York, from Boston all the way to New Orleans. The mentors are: Stephanie Chou, Elisheva Aeder, Mindy Levine, Sonali Pandhe, and Andrea Martin. This session was jointly coordinated by Chana Glatt from SKA and Lindsay Rawitcher from MAGIC, with significant guidance from Ben Lunzer of MAGIC. Here're the slides presented at this event.

    The mentees worked on a wide range of extremely interesting projects, ranging from building websites, robots, drug development for breast cancer, and using technology for architectural designs, to mention a few. The final presentation events were attended by mentees' family members, mentors, school administrators and teachers and members of the MAGIC core team.

    MAGIC is excited about expanding its partners into various parts of the US, and continuing its program with its oldest partner.

    May – Week of 13

    More MAGIC End-of-Year Presentations

    MAGIC mentoring sessions completed in two schools in Northern California in the week of May 13th. Castilleja School in Palo Alto had the final presentation event on May 14th., and Menlo School in Atherton had the final presentation event on May 18th. These events were attended by families of mentees, mentors, school administrators and teachers, and MAGIC staff.

    The MAGIC program at Castilleja had four mentees in this session: Claire W., Ellie G., Isabelle C., and Julia C. These mentees are all in sixth grade. The four mentors are all located in the bay area and were able to be physically present at the event. The mentors were: Deepa Mohan, Falguni Jhaveri, Hema Hariharan, and Venmathi Gunasekaran.

    The mentees presented about the projects that they worked on with their MAGIC mentors this session, spanning a diverse range of topics from a "Dungeons and Dragons"-inspired game, website creation, Python coding, machine learning, and wildfire data analysis. This session was jointly managed by Ann Greyson and Angelika Grossman from Castilleja and Ian Gulliver from MAGIC. The Castilleja presentation slides can be found here.

    Three girls, two from sixth grade and the third from eighth grade, were MAGIC mentees at Menlo: Kaavya B., Lucinda S. and Amy W. Two of the mentors, Lakshmi KP and Smriti Pramanick, are remotely located, and conducted their mentoring using Google hangouts or Skype. The third mentor, Michelle Dion, is based in the bay area, and did both face to face and remote meetings with her mentee.

    The mentee projects consisted of building a website to locate a lost dog, designing and building a magnetically levitating car, and an Arduino based laser tag game. This session was jointly managed by Nina Arnberg from Menlo and Ira Pramanick from MAGIC. The Menlo presentation slides can be found here.

    May – Early Part

    MAGIC End-of-Year Presentations Start

    On May 1st., MAGIC mentee Anna Y. presented her work at LEAP for Education in Salem, Massachusetts. Anna’s MAGIC mentor, Julia Harper, joined the presentation in person and introduced Anna to the audience made up of young girls who were presenting from the Girls Who Code organization. Kayla Dorst, Director of Programs and Innovation at LEAP for Education, hosted the event.

    For her project, Anna developed an online To-Do List application with enhanced features, using several languages including CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. Her software toolkit consisted of GitHub Web Page, GitHub Desktop, and the Atom Editor. LEAP for Education’s mission is to empower first-generation-to-college and under-served youth to succeed in college, careers, and life.

    This mentoring session was coordinated by MAGIC Program Coordinator Kim Fujikawa. The slides from Anna's presentation can be viewed here.


    Another MAGIC end-of-year presentation was held on May 9th. at the Deep Run High School, Virginia. This is a new partnership for MAGIC, and our very first pilot in Virginia!

    School sponsor Ms. Lynn Norris, MAGIC board member Seema Shukla, and Deep Run Coordinator and MAGIC mentor Deepa Kalkunte attended the presentation in person. MAGIC founder Ira Pramanick and MAGIC mentor Sunanda Sridhar joined via Google hangout.

    After a brief introduction to MAGIC and the benefits of this mentoring program to the students in Deep Run’s Girls of Center of Information Technology (GoCIT) club, mentees Mia L. and Allie Q. presented their MAGICal experiences and their projects:

    • Mia wrote a Python program, learned ALICE while adapting a published solution, and was introduced to Raspberry Pi programming and IOT.
    • Allie was introduced to data analytics, and created a word cloud, through Twitter analysis using transformation techniques in the R programming language.

    Both mentees showed great commitment throughout the program, and were very grateful to have been given this opportunity. Their presentations slides can be viewed here.

    March

    Second MAGIC session at the Ann Richards School

    A MAGIC session was kicked off this month at Ann Richards School in Austin, Texas. This is the second session of MAGIC at Ann Richards, which had a pilot session in the spring of 2017. This session will continue through summer of 2018, culminating with a final presentation in early September.

    Two mentees from Ann Richards have been selected to participate in MAGIC for this session, one a sixth-grader and the other an eighth-grader. The sixth grader has been paired with a local mentor and the eighth grader is being mentored remotely by a professional in the San Francisco bay area.

    Here's wishing the two mentor-mentee pairs a magical experience as they together explore STEM topics over the next five months!

    MAGIC Mentee's Paper Published in the PLOS Biology Journal

    One of our past MAGIC mentees, Ria S., co-authored the paper "Digital Health: Tracking Physiomes and Activity Using Wearable Biosensors Reveals Useful Health-Related Information", while working as an intern in the Bioinformatics Group in the Department of Genetics at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The paper was published on Jan. 12, 2018. The Stanford Medicine News Center also ran an article about it.

    Bravo, Ria, we are all very proud of you!

    January – Week of 15

    MAGIC Kicks Off a Spring Mentoring Session at Menlo School

    The Menlo School held its MAGIC mentoring kickoff event for the spring session on January 19th. This is the second session following a very successful MAGIC pilot in the summer of 2017.

    The spring MAGIC session at Menlo consists of three middle school mentees, two in the sixth grade and the third in the eighth grade. Two of the mentors are professionals in the bay area, and the third one is an undergraduate student of Computer Science at MIT, who will be remotely mentoring her sixth grade mentee.

    MAGIC is being offered at Menlo School under the umbrella of Menlo's Bridge to Engineering, Science, Math and Technology (M-BEST) program, which has the goal of providing young women with various opportunities to explore their interests in STEM. M-BEST and MAGIC are delighted to be partnering with each other, and are thankful to the volunteer mentors who make these experiences possible for the mentees.

    Here's wishing the Menlo mentee-mentors pair a wonderful journey as each pair explores the magic of STEM over the next five months!

    January – Week of 08

    MAGIC in its Fifth Year at Castilleja School

    MAGIC launched its spring session at Castilleja School, Palo Alto, CA, on Wednesday, January 10, marking its fifth year of collaboration with Castilleja. Four sixth grade girls attended with their parents, and received personal letters of introduction from their new mentors, who span the range of software and hardware engineers to product managers at a variety of tech companies. The Castilleja session runs January through May, when the mentees will do a final presentation of their projects for their parents, peers, and school representatives.

    Castilleja continues to be an outstanding partner, and we wish each of the new mentees a MAGICal year with their mentors!

  • December

    MAGIC Begins a New Session in Los Angeles

    MAGIC kicked off another session with Yeshiva of Los Angeles Girls' High School (YULA) with five amazing girls, with interests ranging from coding and programming to genetics and oncology research. We have matched the mentees, grades ten through twelve, with five outstanding mentors from around the country. One-to-one introductory sessions are already under way, with initial discussions on some exciting projects.

    YULA continues to be a great partner, and we look forward to another MAGICal year with our five mentees!

    November

    MAGIC Kicks Off in Virginia for the First Time!

    MAGIC is partnering with the Deep Run High School in Richmond to bring MAGIC mentoring to Virginia for the first time this year. Two mentees have been selected into the program, one from the ninth grade, and the other from the tenth grade. One of the mentees will have face to face mentoring with her local mentor, and the other will be remotely mentored by her mentor located in Chicago.

    MAGIC also kicked off this month for five mentees from outside of MAGIC's partner schools, who applied for MAGIC mentoring via our website. The applicants from non-partner schools came from both the US and Canada, and the five selected into the program are from the states of California, Ohio, Massachusetts and South Carolina.

    Wishing each of these mentees a MAGICal year with their mentors!

    October – November

    West Coast MAGIC Mentoring Sessions Start

    MAGIC mentoring sessions were kicked off at two of our partner schools:

    • Our first partner school, The Girls' Middle School (GMS)
      • GMS was the pilot partner school for MAGIC, and this mentoring session marks the beginning of the tenth year of this partnership!
      • The kickoff event was held on Monday, October 30th., at the GMS campus.
      • Five mentees have been matched with mentors. Three of these mentees are from the sixth grade, one from the seventh grade, and another from the eighth grade.
      • The mentees are interested in doing projects in areas ranging from building websites to 3D animation to Artificial Intelligence to Modeling and Architecture!
    • A new partner, The Milpitas Unified School District (MUSD)
      • The MAGIC program at MUSD includes both of the middle schools in MUSD, the Rancho Milpitas Middle School and the Thomas Russell Middle School.
      • The kickoff event was held on Thursday, November 2nd., at the Russell campus.
      • Six mentees have been matched with mentors. One of the mentees is from the sixth grade, three are from the seventh grade, and two from the eighth grade. The STEM topics of interest range over a variety of areas, including ocean/marine biology, chemical engineering, robotics, and technology for music!

    Here's wishing each of the mentees a magical journey in the year ahead!

    October

    MAGIC in New York

    MAGIC is excited to expand to the state of New York! The first MAGIC mentoring session for 2017-18 kicked off on October 19th. with a new partner school, The Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls (SKA) in Long Island, New York. Four girls from ninth to twelfth grades were selected for this inaugural MAGIC session at SKA. Three of them have been matched with remote mentors, and one with a local mentor.

    September – October

    MAGIC Summer Sessions Conclude!

    Summer sessions of MAGIC, one on the east coast and the other on the west coast, culminated with the mentees' final presentation events over the past few weeks. Both these sessions were done with pilot partners of MAGIC. Here is additional information about these sessions, with links to the final presentation slides:

    • Menlo School, Atherton, California
      • Final presentation held on September 12th.
      • Mentees (mentors): Audrey H (Sunanda S), Maya J-K (Stephanie C), Mitsuka K (Hosanna F), Charlotte A (Jaelle S), Bella S (Melissa FM), Sarah F (Tammy D)
      • Menlo contact: Nina A
      • MAGIC coordinator: Ira P
      • Presentation slide deck
    • Leap for Education, Salem, Massachusetts
      • Final presentation held on October 10th.
      • Mentees (mentors): Alexa C (Yashaswini K), Georgia M (Neetu J)
      • Leap4Ed contact: Kayla D
      • MAGIC coordinator: Kim F
      • Presentation slide deck

    A huge congratulations to all the eight mentee-mentor pairs for their hard work and dedication that resulted in superb projects! Special thanks to the school contacts and MAGIC coordinators for keeping the sessions on track for the shorter summer mentoring sessions.

    September – 2

    MAGIC's Tanzanian Partner BigSiS Kicks Off

    MAGIC's Tanzanian partner BigSiS kicked off its program on the 7th. of September by conducting mentor and mentee training sessions, followed by a "Meet Your Mentor" session. It was a three hours long event, where mentees were trained in the first hour, and then taken to a computer lab for an hour of exploring and hands-on practice while mentor training continued. After mentor training, mentees were brought in to meet their mentors, and engage in a brief discussion to get to know each other.

    The session had been planned for twelve mentees and nine mentors; seven mentees and six mentors were in attendance on that day. Informal training sessions for the three mentors who could not attend on the first day were held on the 14th. of September, and for three more mentees, on Friday the 22nd. of September.

    The remaining two mentees are attending a leadership academy in South Africa, and will be mentored remotely. A mentor from MAGIC will be doing the remote mentoring. All pairs have been matched, and BigSiS looks forward to a successful session.

    September – 1

    MAGIC Featured on "For The Record"

    MAGIC was recently featured on "For The Record", a national public affairs radio show on Family Radio. MAGIC board member Jazmine Jung interviewed with Jennifer Burkhiser, and this interview was aired several times on Saturday, Sept 9th, 2017. Jazmine talked with Jennifer about many topics related to MAGIC and girls in STEM, including how MAGIC was started, the need for women in STEM, what services MAGIC provides for middle and high school girls, the types of projects MAGIC mentees do, how volunteers can get involved, and several other topics. Here's a link to that interview.

    August

    MAGIC Invited to Empowerment 2020

    MAGIC was invited to host a booth at, and bring a group of mentees and mentors to, the Empowerment 2020 conference on August 26th at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. The conference was hosted by Rosie Rios, former Treasurer of the United States, to celebrate Equality Day, the anniversary date of the certification of the 19th Amendment that gave women in the US the right to vote.

    The conference exhibits featured exciting demonstrations by Google, NASA, Pixar and YouTube. The MAGIC contingent had a great time attending the various keynotes and panel sessions; meeting astronaut Dr. Yvonne Cagle at the NASA exhibit was an added bonus!

    July

    MAGIC Summer Session Kicks Off

    MAGIC has two pilot partners this summer, one on the west coast and the other on the east coast!

    Six middle and high schooler mentees from the Menlo School in Atherton, CA, are participating in the MAGIC summer mentoring session. Three of the girls are rising eighth graders and the other three are rising tenth graders.

    Our second pilot partner this summer is the Leap for Education (Leap4Ed) organization in Salem, MA. Two Leap4Ed girls are mentees with MAGIC this summer; one is a rising eighth grader and the second is a rising ninth grader. Both the girls are graduates of the "Girls Who Code" program at Leap4Ed.

    The summer mentoring session will last ten to twelve weeks, and will culminate with the mentees doing a final presentation of their projects.

    June

    Ninth MAGIC Session Concludes!

    The last set of mentees from the 2016-2017 MAGIC session presented their projects in a final presentation event held at Google Headquarters on June 9th, 2017. These mentees included those from the East Coast (MA, NY) as well as from the West Coast (CA), and consisted of high school girls from the MAGIC partner school Oak Grove in San Jose, as well as middle and high school girls from non-partner schools.

    The event started with a mentor-mentee lunch at one of Google's famous cafes, and was followed by a tour of the Google campus and visitor center. The day culminated with the final presentation and demonstration event, where each mentee then made a short presentation of her MAGICal experience and her project, and then gave a demonstration of her project. The audience for this event included family members of the presenters, peer mentees, mentors, teachers, school administrators, MAGIC supporters, and members of the MAGIC core team.

    We are grateful to Google for sponsoring this event!

    Many thanks to Ian Gulliver (MAGIC Advisory Board member) for video-recording the presentations as well as mentee interviews during the demo sessions, and to MAGIC mentor Hosanna Fuller for conducting the mentee interviews. Video snippets of the mentee presentations and interviews for this and all other MAGIC final presentation events of 2016-2017 will be posted once they are available, on our website as well as on our Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter pages.

    Here's the list of mentees (with the corresponding mentor names in parentheses) who presented, together with a link to the presentation slide deck:

    • Mentees (mentors): Charlize A (Deepa M), Raaga P (Sandra H), Emily T (Lakshmi KP), Lauren L (Becky B), Shreya S (Jen T and Uma M), Siya K (Venmathi G), Amelia R (Hema H), Ananya P (Huimee S), Cindy G (Joan C), Najma A (Anurupa R)
    • Presentation slide deck
    • Coordinators: Jazmine Jung (Oak Grove), Kim Fujikawa (LA schools), Ira Pramanick (All others)

    A huge congratulations to all the mentee-mentor pairs as well as the coordinators for an outstanding job!

    May – 2

    MAGIC Partners with the Open University of Tanzania

    MAGIC is partnering with the Open University of Tanzania (OUT) to run its STEM mentoring program under the name BIG SISTER IN STEM (BigSiS) in Tanzania. As part of the program activities, OUT facilitated the "2017 Girls in ICT Day", where Tanzanian government officials and several women role models were involved. The Tanzanian government representative, e-Government Agency CEO Dr. Jabiri Bakari, presented the key education statistics that show the involvement of women in different educational levels. He also informed the audience of the shortage of women in the STEM workforce. Women in STEM role models Dr. Magreth Mushi and Dr. Carina Wangwe related their experiences in navigating the challenges faced by women in STEM careers.

    After the talks, the girls were involved in hands-on practice in the computer lab to explore different areas in STEM. The main activities in the lab involved website design and development, video production, games development, and apps development. Thereafter, the girls and facilitators were taken on a tour of one of the leading banks in Tanzania, NMB, where they were met with women from the IT department. This tour was followed by another tour, of the University of Dar es Salaam Computing Center (UCC), where they visited the server room and talked to women working in STEM fields. It was indeed a wonderful day!

    May – 1

    Ninth MAGIC Sessions Conclude at Various Locations

    Several of our partner schools hosted final presentation events for their MAGIC mentee students during the month of May. Each of the mentees presented their work to an audience of peer mentees, mentors, teachers, school administrators, and members of the MAGIC core team. These events marked the conclusion of the 2016-17 MAGIC mentoring sessions at these schools.

    Many thanks to Ian Gulliver (MAGIC Advisory Board member) for video-recording all the final presentation events, and to MAGIC mentor Shami Ahuja, MAGIC Eastside contact Judy Wong-Chen, MAGIC Ann Richards contact Kristina Read, for conducting the mentee interviews.

    Following is the list of the final presentations together with the names of the mentees (the corresponding mentor names in parentheses). Links to the presentation slide decks are also provided. We are grateful to the MAGIC coordinators at these schools.

    A huge congratulations to all the mentees for their hard work and wonderful projects, and to all the mentors for guiding their mentees as they explored the magic of STEM and their dedication to the cause!

    April

    MAGIC Participates in Round-table Hosted by Nancy Pelosi's Office

    MAGIC was honored to be invited to a round-table discussion on the topic of girls in STEM, hosted by Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi's office on Friday, April 7. MAGIC was asked to share issues and concerns about advancing girls in STEM. We discussed broadband access for all, and increasing resources within schools to help support girls in the program.

    Leader Pelosi's D.C. representatives provided updates on policy issues that impact our programs. Other STEM-related organizations present included

    Ira Pramanick and Michelle Garcia represented MAGIC at this event.

    March

    MAGIC Mentee Wins Second Place at Teen Entrepreneur Challenge

    Congratulations to Joon Luther, a MAGIC mentee from the 2015-2016 session, who recently won second place in the Santa Cruz Teen Entrepreneur Challenge, together with her friend Sophia! Here’s what Joon had to say about her project:

    “Our vision was to create a website where someone could order a lunch for themselves through a delivery company, and also order a lunch for a child in need. We called our website 'Share-A-Lunch', then coded it completely from scratch using HTML and CSS. After we finished our project, we sought help from mentors as to how we could improve our website and our project as a whole."

    Joon's MAGIC mentor was Neetu Jain.

    January

    MAGIC Expands to Austin, Texas

    MAGIC kicked off a pilot mentoring session on January 18th in Texas. It is partnering with the Ann Richards School in Austin, Texas. This pilot mentoring session will be for the spring of 2017, and consists of ten mentor-mentee pairs. The mentees are all middle schoolers: five eighth graders, four seventh graders and a sixth grader. Two out of the ten mentors for the Ann Richards mentees are located in Austin, thus offering face to face mentoring sessions. The remaining eight mentors are located outside Texas, and will be conducting remote mentoring sessions with their mentees using Google hangouts and/or Skype.

    The mentees, school personnel, three of the mentors, and the MAGIC core team attended the event which was hosted at the Google offices in downtown Austin. Thank you to Google for sponsoring this event!

  • October – December

    Ninth MAGIC Session Off to a Great Start!

    MAGIC kicked off its ninth year of mentoring in the fall of 2016, with mentees from the following partner schools/centers:

    As in previous years, we have additional mentees from outside of our partner schools, who applied directly through our website. These mentees are located in Massachusetts and California.

    Approximately half of our mentees are middle schoolers, and the remaining are high schoolers. More than half of our mentees in this session are from under-resourced communities. Also, more than half of our mentor-mentee pairs are remote, and this marks the second year in a row where the percentage of remote mentoring has exceeded that of face to face mentoring!

    September – 2

    MAGIC Enters into Partnership with ETR

    As part of MAGIC’s effort to encourage and retain young women in STEM fields, we are excited to announce a new partnership with Education, Training, and Research (ETR). ETR is an organization that works on advancing health and opportunities for youth, families, and communities. Part of ETR's work is to design and supports approaches to increase diversity in STEM fields. ETR’s partnership with MAGIC will bring STEM mentoring to under-represented high school students at the DigitalNEST, a community-based organization serving a rural, agricultural region of Central California. 

    ETR and MAGIC will work together to implement proven mentoring strategies that bring together high school-aged mentees with college student mentors.  The program will foster interest in and increase knowledge of computing as an integral part of computer science and other STEM fields.

    As always, we are sincerely grateful to you, our supporters, for believing in us to carry on this task! We will keep you informed of our progress in this initiative.

    September – 1

    MAGIC privileged to be part of President Obama’s "Computer Science for All" Initiative!

    Today MAGIC is excited to be part of President Barack Obama’s "Computer Science for All" Initiative. This is the President’s bold new initiative to empower all American students, from kindergarten through high school, to learn computer science, and be equipped with the computational thinking skills they need to be creators (and not just consumers) in the digital economy, and to be active citizens in our technology-driven world.

    As part of our commitment to support this initiative and build the CS-aware women of tomorrow, MAGIC will mentor 50 more girls by December 2017, with a priority on serving those from under-resourced communities.

    We sincerely thank you, our supporters, for believing in us to carry on this challenging task! We will keep you informed of our progress in this initiative.

    More details can be found in this White House fact sheet.

    June

    Final Round of 2015-2016 Presentations by MAGIC Mentees

    The 2015-2016 MAGIC mentoring season concluded on June 17th., with the last round of final presentations from the 2015-2016 mentees. Fifteen mentees came from all over California to partake in these presentations. A majority of these mentees found out about MAGIC from sources outside their schools, while a few came from one of our partner schools, Oak Grove High School, in South San Jose. This event was sponsored by Google, and the presentations were held at Google HQ in Mountain View, California.

    After lunch at Google and a tour of the Google campus, the girls gave presentations on their MAGICal experiences, followed by demos of their projects. The audience for the event included the mentee’s families, mentors, core team members, and other interested Googlers. Congratulations to the following mentees for their superb presentations and hard work this session, and also to their mentors for providing them with support and guidance throughout!

    • Mentees:
      Casandra A., Diana N., Esmeralda L., Iris C., Joon L., Julia G., Kim N., Kristina M., Lauren T., Marina L., Morgan C., Purva J., Samantha S., Vasundhara S., and Wynna H.
    • Mentors:
      Anurupa Rao, Caroline Morley, Catherine Wah, Helen Kang, Hema Hariharan, Ira Pramanick, Jaelle Scheuerman, Jen Tannenbaum, Jessica Werk, Lakshmi KP, Magreth Mushi, Neetu Jain, Raquel Martinez, Roshni Chandrashekhar, Soja-Marie Morgens, and Tanya Gupta.

    For this event, MAGIC also had the good fortune of finding a talented Googler, Ian Gulliver, who volunteered to video record the presentations and demos. Thank you, Ian! Finally, a huge thank you to all the MAGIC coordinators and Google for making it possible to host the presentations at Google.

    The slides from the presentations can be found here, and the mentee interview and presentation videos can be found at the links listed below.

    Videos from the Presentations at Google, Inc.

  • Under Construction

    Coming soon!
  • Under Construction

    Coming soon!
  • December

    MAGIC Sessions Started at Several Schools in Fall 2013

    MAGIC entered its sixth year of mentoring in the fall of 2013! A big thank you to all our mentors, mentees, partner schools, advocates and supporters for making these past five years so successful!

    Students from the following schools/centers (listed in alphabetical order) started participating in MAGIC sessions in the past four months:

    About half of the mentors are engaged in remote mentoring, using a variety of remote communication mechanisms such as Google Hangout and Skype.

    July

    MAGIC Conducts Another Pilot of Summer Mentoring

    MAGIC is running a limited pilot of summer mentoring, with a rising ninth grader from Castilleja School being mentored by a graduate student of The University of California at Santa Cruz. This is mostly a remote mentoring session, with some opportunities for face to face meetings.

    June – 2

    MAGIC Session Concludes at Oak Grove

    The end of year meeting with the three 2013-2014 mentees for Oak Grove was held at the end of June 2013. One of the local mentors also attended.

    The meeting started off with the Oak Grove MAGIC coordinator asking the girls to share some of their learnings and projects. Each of them learned to program with their mentors. It was expected that this would be the case for two of the girls, but not all three. They were all able to eventually write simple code to work with robots or manipulate color images on a screen. They all talked about realizing how important detail is in programming - every step must be accounted for. They enjoyed learning to program but also really connected to their mentors and valued that part of their MAGIC experience.

    Their comments included "I really enjoyed it," and "It was great being paired with a woman in STEM."

    June – 1

    MAGIC Session Concludes at Oak Grove

    A paper titled Remote Mentoring Young Females in STEM through MAGIC authored by Ritu Khare, Esha Sahai and Ira Pramanick, has been accepted to be published at the Sixth Conference of MIT's Sixth Learning International Networks Consortium being held from June 16th-19th, 2013, at Cambridge, Massachusetts. This paper conducts a retrospective study of MAGIC's formative years, and presents MAGIC's experience in remotely establishing mentor mentee pairs.

    May

    Palo Alto MAGIC Sessions Conclude

    MAGIC mentees from The Girls' Middle School (GMS), Jordan Middle School, and Castilleja School celebrated the end of their 2012-2013 MAGIC mentoring sessions by demonstrating their projects to a house-full audience consisting of their mentors, their parents and families and the school faculty. This event, held on Tuesday, May 21st, opened with each of the nine mentees giving a short overview of their projects, followed by concurrent demo sessions. Many thanks to GMS for hosting this event!

    April

    MAGIC Session at Navy SPAWAR/Preuss Concludes

    The pilot session of MAGIC mentoring of Preuss School girls by mentors from the US Navy SPAWAR command and UCSD concluded a few days ago with a final presentation event by the mentees. Each of the seven mentee-mentors trio had prepared a demo/presentation of their MAGIC project, and these were done concurrently, as the audience moved from one station to another.

    The audience consisted of mentors, mentee's families, the principal, vice-principal, and some teachers from Preuss and some US Navy SPAWAR officials. The projects ranged a wide variety of topics ranging from: conducting psycho-analysis assessments to soldering metals to building sea-perches.

    February

    MAGIC Expands to Los Angeles

    MAGIC kicked off its pilot session at Yeshiva of Los Angeles Girls High School (YULA) in the first week of February. The pilot consists of one mentor-mentee pair, and the session will last through the school year. The mentee is a senior at YULA and will be remotely mentored by her mentor who lives in the Bay Area and works for Google.

    YULA is a modern, orthodox all-girls high school in the Greater Los Angeles area, with an emphasis on being a top college preparatory school.

  • November

    MAGIC Debuts on the East Coast

    MAGIC commenced at its first school on the East Coast as part of its expansion effort. The program was launched at Cambridge Street Upper School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in November. Two eighth graders were selected for the program, which will run for approximately six months. Both the mentors are from Boston's Children's Hospital at Harvard University.

    October – 3

    MAGIC Resumes Session at the Girls' Middle School

    MAGIC launched its program for the fifth straight year at The Girls' Middle School in Palo Alto, California. The number of mentee applicants was the highest to date, and seven of them were selected to participate in the program. Two are sixth graders, four are seventh graders and one is an eighth grader.

    One of the mentor-mentee pairs will be doing remote mentoring, with the mentor being on the East Coast, and a second one will be part remote, since the mentor is in the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC). The remaining pairs are all participating in face to face mentoring. The mentors are from Clemson University, Intel Computer Clubhouse, Google, Sandisk, Santa Clara University, Stanford, and UCSC.

    October – 2

    MAGIC Partners With the US Navy in San Diego, CA

    A branch of MAGIC was kicked off with the NAVY's SPAWAR command unit in San Diego, California. Six professional women from the Navy are joining hands with six college students from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) to provide mentoring to six middle school girls from the Preuss school. The mentoring model is slightly different from the standard MAGIC model in that 1-1 mentoring is replaced with a 3-way mentoring model. Each group consists of a middle schooler (mentee), a college student (mentor) and a professional STEM woman (mentor). Of the two mentors, one has the primary role, and the other takes on a secondary role, filling in for the primary as needed. A side effect of this is that the college student gets some implicit mentoring by the STEM professional.

    October – 1

    MAGIC In Its Third year at Oak Grove

    MAGIC kicked off its third year at Oak Grove High School in San Jose. Two mentees, one a sophomore and the second a junior, were selected for this session, and a third mentee is on the waiting list. Both mentors are from the Bay Area, thus both these mentees will be mentored face to face. One of the mentors works at Google and the other one is an independent STEM professional, having worked at Sun Microsystems and NetApp in the past.

    September

    MAGIC Mentoring for 2012-13 Commences

    A middle schooler from Jordan School in Palo Alto is the first 2012 fall MAGIC mentee. The Jordan school is not one of the MAGIC partner schools, and the mentee in question found out about the MAGIC program from one of the past MAGIC mentees from GMS. A mentee application via the web followed, and after phone chats with the mentee and her parent, she was matched with a remote mentor in Maryland. The mentor works at the National Institute of Health (NIH).

    August

    MAGIC Pilots Summer Time Mentoring

    MAGIC ran a pilot of summer mentoring this year, with three mentees participating in the pilot. Summer mentoring was on an accelerated schedule compared to the mentoring of the regular academic year, and consisted of about two months of mentoring.

    Two of the mentees who participated had just graduated from high school and were going on to college. They used the mentoring in the summer months to come up to speed on the Java programming language before going to college. The third mentee is a rising freshman in high school, and is continuing with her mentoring for a few weeks beyond the end of summer.

    May – 2

    MAGIC Partners with SCIENTISTA

    MAGIC is proud to join hands with Scientista to achieve their common goal of encouraging more girls to consider STEM careers. The Scientista Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to bridging the gaps between established professionals and pre-professional women interested in pursuing careers in the sciences. It is the largest network of university campus women in science. In their words,

    "Scientista is honored to partner with GetMAGIC.org, who shares our vision of encouraging women to pursue careers in STEM. We are excited to be sharing resources and opportunities with their younger members, and to continue to provide a community for alumni of GetMAGIC as they move on to college and graduate school."

    May – 1

    MAGIC Session Concludes at GMS

    The 2011-2012 MAGIC session at The Girls' Middle School (GMS) concluded this month with each of the mentees presenting some of the projects they have worked on during their mentoring sessions. Each of the two mentees plans to continue to expand on their MAGIC related activities through summer.

  • October

    MAGIC Sessions Kicked Off at GMS and Oak Grove

    The 2011-2012 MAGIC sessions were kicked off at Oak Grove High School in San Jose in the second week of October, and at The Girls' Middle School (GMS) in Palo Alto a week later. Both these sessions will run through the end of the school year.

    June

    MAGIC Mentoring Session at Oak Grove High School Concludes

    In the last week of June, this academic year's MAGIC mentoring session at Oak Grove High School concluded with an informal meeting of the mentee, her mentor and a MAGIC board member. The mentoring session at Oak Grove lasted for five months, commencing in February of this year, and consisted of one mentor-mentee pair. The mentee was a junior with a particular interest in bio-engineering, and that was the focus of the mentoring sessions. The mentor in this case was remote.

    May

    2010-2011 MAGIC Sessions Conclude at GMS and Eastside

    This month marked the end of this academic year's MAGIC sessions at The Girls' Middle School (GMS) and at Eastside Preparatory High School. The middle schooler mentees at GMS presented their work, in the form of slides and live demos, to an audience consisting of some of the school faculty members, their parents and grandparents, MAGIC mentors, and the MAGIC core team.

    For their closing meeting, the high schooler mentees at Eastside discussed their MAGIC work and suggestions for improvement of the MAGIC program at Eastside next year, with the MAGIC core team and the MAGIC faculty contacts at Eastside.

    Mentees from both schools worked on projects from a wide spectrum of STEM areas, including Robotics, Scratch, Android and Java programming, building websites, designing and building models using AutoCAD and SketchUp and model kits. Kudos to the mentees as well as their mentors for a very successful MAGIC program at each of these two schools!

    March

    Google's 2011 IWD Campaign Showcases MAGIC

    March 8th, 2011 is the 100th. anniversary of International Women's Day. As part of its 2011 International Women's Day campaign, Google has selected a few nonprofit organizations that work with girls or women to showcase on the Google's International Women's day website. MAGIC is one of these selected organizations! MAGIC can be found under the Education tab at the bottom half of the page.

    This website offers the opportunity to donate to MAGIC via Google Checkout. Through this website, Google is facilitating people all over the world to support MAGIC's work in encouraging middle and high school girls to consider careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

    February

    MAGIC Kicks Off at Oak Grove High School

    MAGIC mentoring began at the fourth school for MAGIC, since its inception three years ago. The school is Oak Grove High School in San Jose. Four mentees were pre-screened by the school in December 2010, and then interviewed for a single MAGIC slot. An eleventh grader was selected for this program, which will run for approximately six months.

  • November

    MAGIC Session for the Second Year at Eastside Preparatory

    MAGIC mentoring was kicked off for the second consecutive year at Eastside College Preparatory School in early November. Seven high school girls are participating as mentees in the program; five of these are juniors, and two are sophomores. Four out of the seven mentoring pairs will do face to face meetings since the mentors in question are local to the bay area, whereas the remaining three will participate in remote mentoring.

    October

    MAGIC Session Kicks Off at The Girls' Middle School

    The third annual session (2010-2011) of MAGIC started at The Girls' Middle School (GMS) this month. Four spots were offered by MAGIC to the GMS girls; the four mentees consist of a sixth-grader, a seventh-grader and two eighth graders. Two of the mentors are located in the bay area, whereas the remaining two are located in the East Coast. Therefore, half of the GMS mentoring will happen remotely during this session.

    September

    MAGIC Poster at Grace Hopper Conference

    Two of the GMS MAGIC mentees from the 2009-2010 MAGIC session demonstrated some of their MAGIC projects, along with their mentors, at the 2010 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing held in Atlanta from Sept. 28 - Oct 2. The two mentor-mentee pairs, AnaSofia Wang and Pi-chuan Chang, and Julia Zaratan and Ritu Khare, presented "STEM Projects and Experiences: A MAGICal Perspective" in the GHC poster session.

    July

    MAGIC Sessions Conclude at Eastside and Keiller

    The 2009-2010 session of MAGIC at Eastside College Preparatory School and at Keiller Leadership Academy concluded with each of the mentees having completed some project or projects in STEM with their mentors. The projects ranged from finding out what tools and resources it takes to make a website to how X-Rays work, in addition to finding out about various branches of engineering. For the Eastside mentees, one of the high points of their mentoring was a day trip to IBM Research Center in San Jose, where they met with several leading scientists of IBM and got demonstrations of leading edge technology that these researchers are currently working on. One of the mentees wants to participate in another year of MAGIC mentoring.

    May

    Second MAGIC session concludes at GMS

    The 2009-2010 session of MAGIC at The Girls' Middle School (GMS) concluded this month. Each of the five MAGIC mentees at GMS gave a short presentation, followed by a demo, of one or more of the projects they worked on with their mentors as part of their MAGIC mentoring sessions. A non-GMS mentee (who was part of the 2nd year of MAGIC mentoring, but not through a school), also presented her work at this event. The presentations included topics such as programs in Scratch and Alice, making a web page including details of CSS and Flash programming, programs in LEGO, Android programming, Python programming, investigative reports on the Mars rover, how gears work and other engineering topics. Each mentee did a great job of presenting her work!

    The audience for this GMS MAGIC event consisted of present and past GMS MAGIC mentees, MAGIC mentors, parents of MAGIC mentees, and school officials including the GMS Head of school, Assistant Head, and the Dean of students.

    MAGIC mentoring for the 2009-2010 sessions at Keiller and Eastside are going to continue through summer.

    March

    MAGIC on Local TV

    Three members of the MAGIC team — Ira Pramanick, Margot Miller and Pichuan Chang — were interviewed by Suzanne Barnett for the March 2010 edition of "Community Balance" broadcast on local Bay Area TV Channel KMVT 15. This show was cablecast on Comcast and ATT Uverse at 7:30 pm every Thursday in Cupertino, Los Altos, and Mountain View, CA. This interview was aired on every Thursday of March 2010.

    Archives of this program can be found in four parts:

    February

    MAGIC at Eastside

    Three high school girls from Eastside College Preparatory School started in the MAGIC program in the latter half of February. One of the mentees is a senior, and the remaining two are sophomores at Eastside. Eastside is the first school where MAGIC is being offered to high school students. The other two MAGIC partner schools, GMS and Keiller, are both middle schools, whereas Eastside has both a middle school and a high school. Two other high schoolers have participated in MAGIC — one in the 2008-2009 session and the second one in the current session (2009-2010) — and these two mentee participation programs have been established through direct contact with the mentees vs through their schools.

  • December

    MAGIC Session Kicks off at Keiller Academy

    MAGIC has been working for the past few months to expand its mentoring to a second school. The MAGIC program kicked off to a great start at this second school, with the first mentor-mentee pair meeting over the phone during the first week of December. The school is the Keiller Leadership Academy in San Diego. During this session, MAGIC mentoring is being offered to three mentees. The mentoring will run through most of the school year, ending in May 2010. The MAGIC program at Keiller is notable in that each of the mentors is going to be remote. Weekly mentoring will take place through a combination of phone calls, video chats, sharing of online docs, and emails. Some of the MAGIC mentoring at GMS has also been remote, this year and last. Remote mentoring presents many learning opportunities not only to the MAGIC core team, but also to both the mentors and the mentees.

    November

    MAGIC Receives Funding from Google

    Google Inc. Charitable Giving Fund of Tides Foundation has become our first corporate sponsor. We look forward to having more sponsors in the future.

    October

    Grace Hopper MAGIC Panel Successful

    Four middle-schoolers (Cassiel Moroney, Holly Nguyen, Julia Goldman and Smriti Pramanick), a MAGIC mentor (Anjalee Sujanani) and a MAGIC core team member (Foz Saeed) participated as panelists in the MAGIC panel held on October 1st at the 2009 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. The young girls were from The Girls' Middle School (GMS) in Mountain View, CA, and represented the MAGIC mentees from the first MAGIC pilot, held at GMS. The panel was coordinated by Ira Pramanick, founder of MAGIC and a MAGIC core team member.

    The panel was a great success, initiating exciting questions and comments from the large audience. Several potential partnership opportunities surfaced from panel follow-on discussions, and MAGIC is looking forward to these future collaborations.

    Needless to say, the girls were the youngest (and possibly most sought after) attendees and were encouraged with several giveaways from different booths.

    Second MAGIC Session Kicks off at GMS

    The second MAGIC session is off to a good start at The Girls' Middle School. MAGIC mentoring is being offered to five mentees this year at GMS, these mentees being from the sixth and seventh grades. MAGIC is also going to partner with two other schools in the next few months in San Diego and in the Bay Area respectively. Please stay tuned for additional information regarding these partnerships.

    September

    MAGICal Panel at GHC 2009

    Third year in a row, work on MAGIC is going to be presented at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC). This year, the format is a panel, and the topic is "MAGICal Learnings from 1-1 Mentoring of Middle School Girls". As the name suggests, the panel is about findings and experiences from the first MAGIC pilot, from the perspectives of the MAGIC team, the mentors and mentees. This pilot was conducted at The Girls' Middle School. The panelists will include representatives of all three, and we hope to have some teachers and parents in the audience! This panel is scheduled in Session One (10:00am-11:00am) on October 1st. It is a Steering Committee Recommendation Track panel! A summary report on the GMS-MAGIC pilot is available here.

    May

    First MAGIC Pilot Concludes

    MAGIC's first pilot, with the Girls' Middle School, concluded at the end of May 2009. At the final MAGIC meeting of the school year, conducted at the school, each of the mentees gave a 5-10 minute presentation and/or demonstration of the work they had done with their mentors during the pilot. This included projects, reports and computer programs. The audience consisted of parents, mentors and teachers. A pilot report will be posted on this site by the end of September 2009.

  • December

    MAGIC Featured in IEEE Spectrum

    MAGIC has been featured in the December 2008 IEEE Spectrum article "The EE Gender Gap Is Widening". In this article, Erico Guizzo discusses the underwhelming participation of women in electrical engineering. He then goes on to talk about various efforts under way to address this issue, directly or indirectly. MAGIC is mentioned as one of two programs aiming to establish a "direct and durable connection between young women and EE professionals."

    November

    MAGIC Incorporated in the State of California

    MAGIC has been incorporated as a nonprofit public benefit corporation in the State of California. The name of the corporation is GetMagic Corporation. The entire NPO related process is being done by WSGR, a leading technology law firm based in Palo Alto, California, on a pro-bono basis. The MAGIC team is deeply indebted to these wonderful folks at WSGR for this service, and for their guidance and help in related matters!

    October

    Come Join the MAGIC BOF at GHC 2008!

    The MAGIC core team is conducting a "Birds Of a Feather" (BOF) session on "Setting Up an Effective Organization to Support Girls" at the 2008 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. This BOF will be held on Friday, October 3rd., from 5:10pm to 6:10pm, in Torrey's Peak III. Here are the BOF slides.

    MAGIC Pilot Kicks Off to a Great Start

    MAGIC kicked off its pilot with the Girls' Middle School in October 2008. The pilot has ten mentees from sixth, seventh and eighth grades, and each mentee has been paired with a MAGIC mentor. The pilot will last through the end of the school year. MAGIC is looking forward to defining and refining its processes as a consequence of this pilot!

    June

    MAGIC Featured in Newsweek Magazine

    The Newsweek article Revenge of the Nerdette from the June 16th., 2008 issue, cites two outreach programs aimed at encouraging girls to think about science and technology careers. MAGIC is one of them!

    May

    MAGIC Pilot Project

    In the fall of 2008, MAGIC is going to partner with the Girls' Middle School of Mountain View, California, to conduct a pilot of the MAGIC program. More information about the Girls' Middle School can be found here. You can read all about the MAGIC pilot proposal here.

    MAGIC BOF at Grace Hopper 2008

    For the second year in a row, a "Birds Of a Feather" (BOF) proposal on a MAGICal topic has been accepted at the Grace Hopper Conference. The topic of the BOF is "Setting Up an Effective Organization to Support Girls". This BOF will be held on Friday, October 3rd, from 5:10pm for an hour.

    January

    MAGIC Establishes Itself as a Non-Profit Organization

    Following the project kickoff, MAGIC is undertaking the steps necessary to establish itself as a non-profit organization.

  • October

    MAGIC Project Kicked Off

    The MAGIC project was kicked off on October 18th., 2007, at the 2007 Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) of Women in Computing Conference, which was held at Orlando, Florida.