FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 27, 2011
Danielle McNamara
(510) 987-0230
Press Release
After months of designing, creating and competing, a team of students from Hudson Magnet Middle School walked away as national champions of a grueling engineering competition.
The group beat out hundreds of other teams in California at preliminary and regional competitions, as well as teams from seven other states to triumph at the Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) National Engineering Design Competition held at the Microsoft Conference Center in Redmond, Washington June 24 – 26. The four-student team came out on top by designing the best wind energy device.
Team members Kyrene Aganon, Michelica Balajadia, Christina Le and Rose Chelsea Lubang were led by advisor James Mills. The students are served by the MESA center housed at the California State University Long Beach College of Engineering.
This is the second year in a row a middle school team from Hudson has won the national competition. Mills was the advisor for that team as well. This is also the third year in a row that national winners came from the MESA CSU Long Beach center.
Teams are judged on mechanical power and wind-to-vehicle transfer power as well as an oral presentation, technical paper and academic display. Focusing on wind energy signifies 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 as well as how to think like environmental scientists.
The wind energy competition 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. Some 60% of MESA high school graduates go on to college in math, engineering or science based studies, making the award-winning MESA program an imperative at a time when California’s ranking has slipped to 45th among all states in graduating science and engineering majors. MESA is administered by the University of California.
For more information about the Hudson students, contact Saba Yohannes-Reda at sreda@csulb.edu or 562-985-1463.
For more information about MESA visit mesa.ucop.edu