Companies rely on San Diego MESA for top engineers

For over 25 years the MESA Engineering Program (MEP) has supported educationally disadvantaged students so they become the engineers and computer science professionals urgently needed by companies to compete in today’s global marketplace.

In the San Diego area, the MEP at San Diego State University (SDSU), established in 1984, has earned a reputation as the place where companies can go to find the area’s best and brightest young engineers and computer scientists

“We’ve hired 36 MESA graduates since we began working with the program in 1992,” said Cindy Landau, Director of Human Relations for Rick Engineering, the largest civil engineering firm based in San Diego. “We support the program because of the caliber of the individuals that come out of it year after year. When I see MESA on someone’s resume, I know I’m dealing with someone who is talented, professional, and ready to work well on a team.”

“Because we have an active research and development arm here, we find a lot of talent from India, but it’s better for us to cultivate home-grown professionals and hire them locally,” said Tori Robinson, manager at Sony Electronics Headquarters in San Diego. “We’ve hired two or three full-time employees from MEP who have been with us for years. They are the first in their family to go to college, let alone work for a company like Sony.”

Another global company with San Diego operations is Hamilton Sundstrand, a division of United Technologies, one of the world’s top 10 aerospace suppliers, where SDSU MESA alum Maria-Victoria Charles has worked for five years.

The first generation in her family to complete high school, she earned her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at SDSU in 1997. A single mother and veteran who “worked 15-hour days seven days a week” to make ends meet, Charles discovered MESA at San Diego City College (SDCC) and continued in MEP when she transferred to SDSU.

Today Charles helps develop commercial and military aviation power systems. Since she started at the company five years ago, she has helped design systems for the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the Airbus A-380, the V-22 Osprey, the C-5 Galaxy cargo plane and the Blackhawk helicopter.

“Industry depends on MESA because of the quality of engineers we get from the program,” said Charles. “The students are serious, motivated and disciplined; they take initiative and ownership in what they do. MESA gives the students the competitive edge they need to be successful.”

Charles’s colleague, fellow MESA alum Tarrence Mack illustrated this competitive edge with the stories of two MEP students.

One student was quickly able to size up and connect with a prospective employer at a job fair because he had previously spent time getting to know the employees and the company while participating in a MESA-sponsored shadow day at the firm. The other student astounded intern-hiring managers with his knowledge of kaizen, a Japanese continuous improvement philosophy and process the company used to manage complex manufacturing projects. He had learned about it during a MESA-sponsored training academy. The student got the internship.

“ MESA has the closest ties to industry and the best relationships with the companies of any program on campus,” concluded Mack.

Hoping to take those relationships to a whole new level is Dolores Ventura, another SDSU alum who now heads the campus MEP Industry Advisory Board and uses the program to help recruit candidates to her company, Infrastructure Engineering.

Ventura, whose company recently hired two MEP students, is working with others in the program to develop “MESA Advantage,” a report card-style rating system for students. In exchange for helping build the system, companies will have direct access to a pool of pre-screened job candidates who represent the top performers. Ventura describes the system, which is scheduled for launch in the fall, as “totally awesome.”

Other organizations that support the program include Qualcomm, Unisys, Sony Electronics and the California Regional Water Quality Control Board, where alum and active program volunteer Melissa Valdovinos makes sure drinking and irrigation water on the Mexican border stay within state health and safety standards.

“MEP was the most rigorous and effective program I saw on campus. It supported and prepared students for the real work they are expected to do after graduation,” she said. “You have to be (prepared in MESA) because if you don’t show up for something, you’re out. There are high expectations for students, and we deliver.”

When Valdovinos’ hectic academic schedule as an engineering undergraduate forced her to drop out of many of the campus organizations she had joined, MEP was “the one program I kept because it helped me the most.” In addition to providing industry with talented professionals, MEP produces a diverse candidate pool, which brings “creativity, fresh ideas and new solutions” to organizations that need to innovate to be successful, she said.

It was just such a fresh idea that occurred to fellow MEP alum Joel Valdovinos (no relation to Melissa) when he made the bold decision to start his own engineering firm with a partner two years ago. The company, CValdo Engineering, was recently chosen by the municipal government of National City in San Diego County to help develop two of the city’s top-10-priority public construction projects, an aquatic center and a senior village.

“Without MEP, it would have been much tougher and would have taken me much longer to graduate, if at all,” said Joel Valdovinos. “Having the mentoring, gaining access to financial aid opportunities, the industry shadow days, developing writing and communication skills, these were all tremendous benefits I wasn’t even aware of until I was in the business world.” His firm now counts two MEP alums on a staff of seven.

Companies such as CValdo must not only attract strong, diverse engineering talent, they must keep them. Because industry reaches out to the MEP students so early and often, that interaction tends to breed long-term loyalty. MEP alum Victor Baker, construction manager at Rick Engineering, first gave his resume to the company as a freshman. This year will be his 10 th with the company.

“Victor is the model of what can be achieved with a successful program like the MEP,” said Rick’s colleague Cindy Landau. “He is one of the many reasons why the program is one of our mainstays—they come to work for us, and they stay.”

The director of the San Diego State University MEP center is Theresa Garcia. The San Diego City College MESA Community College Program director is Rafael Alvarez.

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