California MESA students capture second place
in national engineering competition

A student team from Stagg High School in Stockton (San Joaquin County) nabbed second place in the MESA USA National Engineering Design Competition held at CSU Fullerton this past June. Sixteen junior and senior high school teams, representing eight states, vied for top honors with their vehicles powered solely by mousetraps.

Timothy Baldwin, Angel Lam, Alexis Oliva, and Matthew Richards submitted a mousetrap car that broke previous national records for speed and power. The students netted first place for their oral presentation and second place for their technical paper.

Esau Sanchez and Julio Salazar represented California in the junior high school category. The team, from Gage Middle School in Huntington Park (Los Angeles County), captured second place nationally in the academic display and speed categories.

The overall rankings are established through the combined scores in six ­ categories.

The student teams had to win many preliminaries in their states to make it to the national competition. The national contest was co-hosted by the MESA programs at CSU Fullerton and UC Irvine.

“I’m overwhelmed,” said Stagg High School teacher and MESA Advisor Andrew Walter. “I’m really proud of the students. I thought the car would do fairly well and it did more than expected. There are so many logistical variables to a project like this.”

“I’m very happy,” said Oliva, a junior. When asked if he wanted to compete again in the national competition, he vowed, “I’m coming back!”

Then all four Stagg team members chorused, “Thank you, Mr. Walter!”

“I’m just thrilled for the students,” said Maria Garcia-Sheets, who directs the University of the Pacific MESA Center and oversees the Stagg MESA program. “This was a totally different kind of competition for them—more intense, competitive and exacting. They are already an awesome team and this contest upped their excellence a couple of notches further.”

Students were evaluated for the quality of their written papers, oral presen­ tations, displays, and car per­ formance for speed, accuracy and power. The student-designed vehicles were judged by representatives from SBC, The Fluor Corporation, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Raytheon, and the U.S. Navy.

The competition is developed to test students’ command of physics and math principles as well as tap their creativity. The curriculum behind the competition is mapped to the appropriate grade level state education standards.

The MESA program at the Univer­ sity of the Pacific provides math and science support to 750 pre-college students in the Stockton area. Teachers Walter and Bill Lorentz are the MESA advisors at Stagg.

The MESA program at CSU Los Angeles provides math and science ­ support to 600 pre-college students in the area, including students at Gage Middle School. Enrique Salgado is the MESA director at CSU Los Angeles and Lawrence Lu is the MESA advisor at Gage.

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