Middlebury College recently received a Campus Action Project grant from the Elect Her: Campus Women Win initiative sponsored by the American Association of University Women. This program aims to empower female college students to run for positions in student government. Currently, only 36% of our student government is comprised of women. In addition, only one woman has been elected president of Middlebury College’s SGA in the last ten years.  The Elect Her initiative tries to reverse this trend. Women who run for student government are also more likely to consider running for office after college.

The American Association of University Women in conjunction with Running Start will be facilitating a daylong workshop in early March. This workshop will give female students the tools to run a successful political campaign.

We are turning to faculty today to reap the maximum benefits of this grant. We are asking faculty to consider nominating up to five highly motivated female students who would benefit from this experience. Elect Her is open to any young woman who is interested in developing leadership skills-not just those who are interested in political office.

The Elect Her Planning Committee in partnership with the Chellis House, the college’s women’s resource center, would be very grateful if you could send in your nominations by December 7th.  Nominations can be sent to the Elect Her Planning Committee at rabdelhamid@middlebury.edu.  We will be in contact with the nominees ourselves.  Feel free to contact us via email with any further questions.
Please visit the links below for more information:

http://www.aauw.org/learn/LeadershipPrograms/electHer.cfm

http://www.runningstartonline.org/programs/elect-her

Thank you so much for your time. We look forward to hearing from you.

Best,

Elect Her Planning Committee

Rana Abdelhamid ’15, Alex Strott ’15, Mandy Kwan ’15, Karin Hanta, Director of Chellis House