California industry hires MESA college grads

Companies and agencies throughout the state have been busy receiving letters in recent months from MESA graduates accepting offers of employment. These new hires continue MESA’s proud tradition of supplying highly qualified engineering and technology graduates to help power the state’s economy. Among those moving into technical jobs in industry:

Fresno’s Quad Knopf, one of the state’s fastest growing civil engineering companies, has hired two MESA graduates from the CSU Fresno MESA Engineering Program, Gladys Guzman and David Ramirez. Over the past six years Quad Knopf has hired nine civil engineering graduates of the Fresno MESA center.

Alejandro Orozco, a MESA graduate of Gavilan College and UC Santa Cruz , was recently hired as a scientist for biotech company ARK Diagnostics, Inc . after completing his bachelor’s degree in biology. In addition to his professional successes, Orozco continues to support MESA by volunteering to speak on panels at MESA student events, and several of his siblings and cousins have also joined MESA. Says Alejandro, “If it weren’t for MESA, I would not have been able to complete my degree, let alone secure this position. The support and resources MESA provided me were tremendous.”

Agilent Technologies in Santa Rosa has hired Emanuel House, a graduate of the Santa Rosa Junior College and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo MESA programs. House will be working in the company’s software compliance group.

Boeing has hired CSU Los Angeles MESA Engineering Program graduate Maida Lopez. Lopez, who grew up in the inner city of Los Angeles, is a systems engineer, testing software for a new satellite control system at the company’s Huntington Beach (Orange County) facility.

From the Sacramento City College MESA Program, graduate Ben Buabin has just been hired by Freescale Semiconductor of Austin, Texas. Freescale, a subsidiary of Motorola, hired Buabin after he completed his computer engineering degree from UC Santa Cruz. Buabin, the first in his family to go to college, will rotate among different business groups within the company for his first year. This flexibility helped Buabin choose Freescale from among competing offers.

Vivian White graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in physics and took a position with the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in San Francisco, where she manages an outreach program called Project ASTRO that places professional astronomers as mentors in third- through ninth-grade classes.

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