MESA featured in PBS program

MESA is featured in a half-hour national PBS documentary on the current and future status of innovation in the United States.

The Innovators: Designing the Future examines the power of scientific innovation to change our lives and our culture.

MESA , represented by its program at Stagg High School in Stockton, is prominently featured as a solution to developing the next generation of innovative engineers and scientists. MESA is the only such program highlighted in The Innovators.

The MESA program at Stagg and other local schools are overseen by the MESA center at the University of the Pacific (UOP) and its director, Maria Garcia-Sheets.

Explained Innovators producer Wendy Lobel, “We set out to find three successful engineers and scientists to feature, and also a school-based math or science program that could serve as a model, an inspiration, for other schools.

“For weeks, we conducted an extensive search,” said Lobel. When she flew out from New York to Stockton to meet MESA Advisor Andrew Walter and his students, she knew her search had ended. “ MESA stood out from the pack, and we knew in our hearts that it was the right program to highlight,” she said

“What MESA lacked in resources, it made up for in soul… the people involved in MESA, it seemed, were truly changing the lives of kids who might otherwise have fallen through the cracks,” said Lobel.

The documentary includes interviews with the head of the Institute of Design at Stanford University, a nanotechnology professor at Rice University, a robotics professor at Georgia Tech, and actor Judd Hirsch from the TV series NUMB3RS.

Walter and his MESA students are featured in interviews and videos of the class busily building balsawood bridges, desktop trebuchets, and a Rube Goldberg assemblage of paper plates, dominos, and levers that ultimately bursts a balloon.

Walter explains in the show, “ MESA is a way to teach students to think outside the normal box. It teaches them that there are multiple ways to look at a problem. There’s no one solution that necessarily is the best answer.”

The documentary includes interviews with many students, including then-senior Jessica Ortiz who said that she originally was discouraged from considering college. But “Mr. Walter, all the other people in MESA, they’ve helped me realize I’m more than what I think about myself,” she said.

Shortly after the documentary was filmed, Ortiz began her freshman year at UOP as a bioengineering major.

A special showing of the documentary was held last November at the Pacific campus. During the event, Walter received a special commendation from State Assemblyman Greg Aghazarian for his work with MESA. The assemblyman noted that "This program is exceptional; we must do all we can to support you and it for the wonderful things it does for students.”

Other special guests among the 60 people who attended were Dr. Lynn Beck, dean of the UOP Bernard School of Education; Johnny Ellison, representing Sandia National Laboratory; Dr. Phil Gilbertson, Provost of UOP; Dr. Ravi Jain, dean of the UOP School of Engineering and Computer Science; Valerie Novak, member of the San Joaquin Delta College Board of Trustees; Robert Oakes, vice president of External Relations of the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities and member of the MESA Statewide Board of Directors;; Bill Ross, member of the Stockton Unified School District School Board and Joanna Royce-Davis, UOP dean of Student Life.

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