University of Colorado Denver | Anschutz Medical Campus

Programs & Events

Register for the Body Project Today!

This proven 4-hour program empowers women and non-binary students to:

Resist cultural pressures to accept the appearance ideal
Reallocate your valuable time to something other than striving for an unrealistic body
Increase confidence and body satisfaction
Bond with other like-minded students

What’s fun about The Body Project? The sessions break down our understanding of beauty standards and challenge how we see ourselves. The sessions are broken up into two 2-hour sessions, held one week apart. You will be part of a small group of women and non-binary students discussing the appearance ideal and how to fight back against it.

The proposed intention of this project is to begin a conversation around women and femme-presenting bodies and the rigorous expectations placed on them. Please be aware that stereotypically “feminine” pronouns are the default for this session, but extra accommodations have been made to make sure that basic information learned is applicable to all genders.

You can request The Body Project for you and your friends/organization by emailing us at cii@ucdenver.edu.

Please note: the Body Project is not group therapy or treatment for eating disorders. If you are concerned that you or a friend are struggling with an eating disorder, please call Counseling Center Services at 303-315-7270.

Friday, November 4th, 2022
All Day | St. Cajetan’s

WGEL Summit Registration

After a re-imagining of what an all-inclusive leadership summit entails, the Women & Gender Equity in Leadership Summit (formerly known as the Auraria Women’s Leadership Conference), serves as a peak day of advocacy and mobilization for the Auraria campus.

This year's theme is "Destroy the Dystopia" to open up conversation, brainstorming, and action items to unpack the very unreal events that have occurred in the last couple of years including, but not limited to: a global pandemic, the overturning of Roe V. Wade, and laws that infringe upon human right passing across the nation.

The Summit will provide an array of dialogic sessions and skill-based workshops that aim to empower, advocate, and develop a more just understanding of inequities that affect women and gender-expansive individuals, and is open to students, staff, and faculty who want to develop in their practice with inclusive action, critical thought, and inquiry.

Please note: While this event is open to all members of the Auraria community, it will be centering the voices of the most impacted by gender disparities to improve outcomes for women, femme folks, queer, transgender, non-binary, gender expansive, neuro-divergent, Black, Brown, and communities of color. This all-day event will bring together individuals who fall into the gender-expansive community beyond what qualities are confined for someone to identify within womanhood, cultivating an empowered and liberated day of development.

For more information visit our Tri-Institutional website or email Jill Rubin😊

Celebrate Women's History Month by attending events and sessions dedicated to the past and continued success of all women*

Importance & Value

Women's History Month is a celebration and time of intentional recognition of women’s achievements and historical significance. Recognizing the achievements of women can have a huge impact on the development and confidence of girls and young women. It is hard to imagine yourself in a career when you don’t see role models that look like you in the fields you dream of contributing to.

Moreover, when women are excluded from contributing to society it has devastating effects. For example. due to a lack of women in medicine it took decades to uncover that women typically experience different symptoms for heart attacks than men (something Dr. Nanette Wenger spent much of her career researching) due to a lack of women in engineering and STEM, we did not consider how seat belts may not protect women’s bodies the same way (credited to Dr. Astrid Linder).

Since many of the achievements that women are responsible for are underrepresented and undervalued in our history books and literature, it is imperative that we spend time calling attention to what women/women have done and can still yet do to change our world!

History & Evolution

Started as a local celebration in California in 1978, the movement spread across the country as more communities became involved. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter declared the Week of March 8th (International Women's Day) as National Women's History Week, in response to lobbying by a determined collection of women/women’s groups. In 1987, almost a decade since the first celebrations in California, Congress officially designated March as Women's History Month.

March 2023 "Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories"

A diverse collection of CU Denver organizations and offices are planning events, learning opportunities, and ways to get involved -- all in celebration of the accomplishments and brilliance of women.

*We would like to acknowledge that our definition of women includes all of our sisters, not just our cis-ters.