High School students attended a two-day retreat at Snow Mountain Ranch last week.  This was a formative trip, as our young women engaged in relaxing and sometimes challenging activities that allowed them to understand and appreciate the unique characteristics of each of our almost 300 High School students and faculty members, while taking in the breathtaking views.  

Some ambitious students woke at the crack of dawn to challenge themselves with the Continental Divide hike, others opted to go fishing, while some of our students tackled other adventures including tubing, racing through a ropes course, and canoeing.   Heather Gordon, our new campus minister led the girls in a thought-provoking prayer service in which the students talked about how they can be the light in others’ lives, as well as how they can learn to deliberately receive and accept the light given to them by others.

At a town hall meeting under clear blue skies and the towering mountains as her backdrop, Ms. Iswari  asked the girls to try to imagine what their lives would look like if each day they made a conscious decision to choose courage over comfort- reaching out to someone who looks lonely or uncomfortable because they’ve been there, too, standing up for someone who is different but still created in God’s image, choosing words carefully so that others don’t feel excluded or dismissed, or even trying something hard that they know there’s a good chance they’ll fail.  

This experience clearly moved our High School students to a better place mentally, physically and spiritually, just the result we are hoping for…

Morgan Wagner ’15 is completing her Masters degree in Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. This fall, she will be working at Argo.ai, a technology platform company that works with leading automakers to deliver a fully integrated self-driving system that can be manufactured at scale for safe and reliable deployment in ride-sharing and goods delivery services.  In this role, Morgan will be the Vehicle Interfaces Engineer, working on autonomous vehicles.  Morgan has also interned at Argo AI previously and is excited to start her career at this progressive company.

Morgan credits her SMA education and, specifically her Calculus and Physics courses at SMA with sparking her interest in Engineering.  While at SMA, Morgan founded the SMAbotics team and built it into the competitive team it is today.  Morgan continues to give back by volunteering with the robotics programs at local Pittsburgh high schools.

Morgan is the product of our excellent STEM curriculum and we couldn’t be more proud of her. 

For an excerpt of Morgan's recent interview at SMA, click HERE.

Dr. Lisa Damour Parent Presentation

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

7:00 - 8:30 PM

Community Center

RSVP HERE

ABOUT UNDER PRESSURE

In Under Pressure, Lisa Damour, Ph.D., The New York Times bestselling author of Untangled, returns with an urgently needed guide to the alarming increase in anxiety and stress experienced by girls from elementary school through college. However, not all stress is bad. “Anything that asks us to work at the edge of our current capacity is stressful, but that’s how we learn and grow,” writes Damour.
 

Damour explores stress in all forms and details the many facets of girls’ lives where tension can take hold and offers critical coping strategies to help parents reduce their daughters’ anxiety and address the toxic pressures to which our culture subjects girls and young women.
 

ABOUT DR. DAMOUR

Dr. Lisa Damour is a psychologist, author, teacher, speaker, and consultant. She writes the monthly Adolescence column for the New York Times and is a regular contributor at CBS News. She serves as a senior advisor to the Schubert Center for Child Studies at Case Western Reserve University and as the Executive Director of Laurel School’s Center for Research on Girls. Dr. Damour is the author of two The New York Times bestselling books: Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood and Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls. Dr. Damour draws on years of clinical experience and the latest research to provide sound, practical guidance to girls as well as to their parents, teachers, and advocates.
 

For more information about Dr. Damour, visit DrLisaDamour.com.

Heartiest Congratulations to Sydney Silver '20! Sydney competed at the U.S.A. Swimming Junior Nationals Championships (18 and under) at Stanford University in Palo Alto. In the 100 backstroke she placed 13th in a time of 1:02.68. This time qualified her for the 2020 U.S.A. Swimming Olympic Team Trials. This is the meet U.S.A. Swimming uses to select the US Olympic Team for the 2020 Olympic Games. It is the fastest and hardest meet to qualify for in the country. At this meet, the top two finishers in each event will compete in those events at the 2020 Olympics. The Olympic Trials will be held June 21-28 at the Century Link Center in Omaha, Nebraska. Good luck Sydney,and we couldn’t be more proud!!!

SMA graduate Isabel Forward recently had her article, Migrants at the Border Have Lost Their Dignity, published in Slate magazine, an online magazine of news, politics, technology, and culture. The article describes her trip to El Paso, TX and her volunteer work with the migrants who passed through. Isabel notes in the article, "Love alone cannot save us, no. We need reform on a level that is much broader. We need to work toward stopping the original injustices that break us." 

Isabel graduated from SMA in 2016. She is a rising senior at Villanova who is a double major in English and Education and a double minor in Peace and Justice and Spanish. At Villanova, Isabel works for the Office of Disability Services and is a member of Phi Sigma Pi National Honors Fraternity and the Blue Key Society. She is also a New Student Orientation Counselor and a Trip Leader for the Service and Justice Experience.  Isabel is applying for a Fulbright Scholarship and for the Peace Corps.  Her long term plans include attending law school

You can read the full article HERE.