 "Photo: Jason Payne / Staff Photographer")
Cars racing, bridges collapsing and strange objects falling from the sky - this was the scene at San Diego State on Saturday, but the cars were made from mouse traps, the bridges from popsicle sticks and the objects were eggs.
Over the weekend, the Mathematics, Engineering and Science Achievement Schools Program hosted the annual MESA Day event, giving middle school students from all over San Diego County the chance to participate in a number of science-based activities and win awards for their performance.
The MESA Schools Program is a branch of MESA that focuses on motivating middle and high school students to go to college and pursue degrees in mathematics, engineering and science. The statewide program includes approximately 350 students in the San Diego area.
In the Engineering building, where students were testing out their handmade miniature cars and bridges, MSP Academic Program Coordinator Joy Taylor was cheering on participants and keeping score.
Taylor, who works for the SDSU College of Engineering, said that many of the students in MSP will be first-generation college students.
"Our goal is to motivate students to want to go to college and make them realize that it's a possibility," Taylor said. "MSP is a resource for them."
The MSP is integrated into 16 schools in the San Diego Unified School District as an elective class with an additional club at some campuses. Students in the program are exposed to guest speakers from math and science fields, workshops on topics such as financial aid, and they are provided with tutoring.
Donna Goyer, the director for the SDSU MSP, said the program is highly beneficial to students because the projects they work on are curriculum-based and give them hands-on experience.
"The program is designed to inspire students," Goyer said. "They realize they actually do need to know concepts like mass, velocity and aerodynamics. This stuff is exciting and it applies to real life."
Many teachers feel that the curriculum in middle school and high school classrooms is too rooted in textbook material and there aren't enough lab experiments and trial and error work.
Kim Belasco, a science and MESA teacher at Montgomery Middle School in Linda Vista said that seven of her students greatly improved their grades since becoming involved with the MESA class.
"A lot of students can't comprehend the textbooks, so the hands-on projects we work on enables them to make those connections," Belasco said. "It gives them the opportunity to apply what they are learning in their math and science classes."
SDSU students such as criminal justice senior Juan Gonzalez have also become involved in the program as tutors and mentors. Gonzalez became a tutor for the MSP three years ago and now works on campus as the program's administrative assistant.
"I always had a passion for math, engineering and helping kids," Gonzalez said. "By working on creativity and team work, these students are enhancing their skills in math, engineering and science."
Gonzalez tutors twice a week at a middle school in the county and acts as a college mentor to students who are unsure of which major and career field they want to pursue.
This year's MESA Day event was the first since 2003, when the program was stopped during the budget cuts of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign, that students competed for the opportunity to move on to the regional and state competitions sponsored by MESA.
Of the 66 students who participated in the event, about six will move on to the regional competition held at University of California, Irvine.
This Saturday, MSP will bring high school students to SDSU for the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers' Engineering and Science Day Conference as part of National Engineering Week.
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