FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 18, 2011
Danielle McNamara
(510) 987-0230
Press Release
After months of designing, creating and competing, two teams of students from the Long Beach Unified School District walked away as state champions of a grueling engineering competition.
The groups beat out 14,000 other students at preliminary and regional competitions held across California, to triumph at the Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) Engineering Design Competition’s statewide championship at UC Santa Barbara on May 14. Under the guidance of MESA advisor James Mills, both the middle and high school teams from LBUSD came out on top by designing the best wind energy device.
The two Long Beach teams will represent California in the upcoming MESA National Engineering Design Competition to be held June 23-25 at the Microsoft Conference Center in Washington.
The wind energy design competition falls in line with MESA’s goal to stay current with science, engineering and technology trends. The project teaches students to understand design principles such as torque, generating and storing wind energy and how to think like environmental scientists.
The middle school winners from Hudson International Magnet School are Christina Le, Michelica Balajadia, Kyrene Aganon and Rose Chelsea Lubang.
The high school winners from Long Beach Polytechnic High School are Breanna Nery, Rae Jillian Rivera and Kimberly Ventura.
Both schools are served by the MESA center housed at CSU Long Beach’s College of Engineering.
The project is part of MESA Days, a yearly showcase of students’ math and science know-how. Through MESA and MESA Day competitions, students can explore future careers in science, engineering and other technical fields.
MESA is an academic preparation program that serves more than 20,000 California pre-college, community college and university students who are educationally disadvantaged. Seventy percent of schools served by MESA are among the lowest-performing in the state.
Almost two-thirds of MESA high school graduates go on to college as math, engineering or science majors.
For more information about the students, contact CSU Long Beach MESA director Saba Yohannes-Reda at sreda@csulb.edu or 562-985-1463.
For more information about MESA visit mesa.ucop.edu