And now, ladies, it's time to get SMART: Girls Club of America Inc. has been awarded a three-year grant of $784,147 from the National Science Foundation to support GCA's Operation SMART, a program of informal education for girls ages 6 to 18.
The acronym stands for Science, Math and Relevant Technology, and, as Girls Club National Executive Director Margaret Gates observed, "Early test scores show girls equal to boys in their aptitude for science and math, yet by junior high school, girls tend not to pursue interest and ability in these fields."
Explaining that the first phase of the program will be directed at early adolescence (girls 11 to 14), program director Ellen Wahl Sullivan concurred: "The years of early adolescence are a time when barriers to participation and sex role stereotypes can easily overpower initial interest in science and math. Operation SMART is designed to remove those barriers. . . .
"No matter what the activity," Sullivan continued, "our goal is to promote girl's thinking in a scientific way. We want to generate questioning, curiosity, exploratory urges, the habit of documentation. We want girls to build things and to take them apart.
Operation SMART will begin Wednesday at the Girls Clubs of Syracuse and Schenectady, N.Y., and in Lynn, Greenfield, Pittsfield, Springfield and Holyoke, Mass. By the end of 1988, the GCA estimates Operation SMART will have reached 500,000 girls, 250,000 parents and 190 local communities of Girls Clubs.
Forlorn Pooch Has Tattoo, Needs Owner
Tricia Durand, where are you?
Your 75-pound golden retriever, Blaze, the one you had tattooed with identification behind the right ear, has been found. Dr. Anthony Shipp, a Beverly Hills veterinarian, is trying to locate you.
He ran a weeklong classified ad in The Times. Still no luck, which is frustrating because Shipp thinks he would recognize the woman who brought the dog to his clinic for tattooing eight years ago. The veterinarian said Durand lived in Malibu at the time.
Her 10-year-old retriever was found in Hancock Park a month ago by a man who called the Canine Bureau of Identification in New York and was referred to Shipp.
"We put something special on the tattoo, which the girl requested" he said. "I'm not going to tell what it is, because that's the only way we'll get the right owner."
King of Scrabble Takes on the Senate
Jason Lief earns straight A's, serves as student body president and plays baseball at Fairfax High School.
