Senior research scientist Fern Marx served as seminar resource person and facilitated two workshops at a week-long gathering of 38 high school educators from around the world in July 2003. InterCultural Promise: Educating a New Generation of Women Leaders was presented by Saint Mary’s College Center for Women’s InterCultural Leadership in Notre Dame, Indiana. Drawing on the global education work of the Sisters of the Holy Cross and augmented by guest presenters, the seminar enabled participants to reflect on the challenges facing educators of today’s young women and to share lessons learned from dealing with those challenges.

Presenting work from her WCW project on Raising Competent and Confident Girls, Marx used one workshop to focus on the interplay of gender equity and adolescent development when instilling leadership concepts in high school girls. In another session, she introduced participants to leadership development through social activism, using the WCW teaching guide, Shaping a Better World: Global Issues/Gender Issues, authored by Janet Kahn and Susan Bailey. Participants in the seven-day conference included lay and religious educators from Bangladesh, Uganda, Sri Lanka, Brazil, and five U.S. states. They came from public high schools, Catholic, Islamic, and Native American schools, and from girls-only and coeducational institutions.