Spokane MESA Students Advance to National Engineering Competition

SPOKANE, Wash. — A team of students from Salk Middle School and a combined team representing students from North Central and Lewis & Clark high schools have won the right to represent Washington state at a national student engineering competition June 24 through 26 in Irvine, Calif.

The two teams, winners last March in the Spokane Mathematics, Engineering and Science Achievement engineering competition coordinated by Terrie Ashby-Scott of Washington State University Spokane, also took first place honors at the state level in a May 24 competition in Seattle. The victories at the state level earned both student teams the chance to participate in the National Engineering Design Competition sponsored by MESA USA, a national organization that provides academic support for educationally disadvantaged students to excel in math, engineering and science.

This year’s national engineering competition will be held on the campus of California State University, Fullerton.  Outstanding middle and high school students from MESA programs in eight states will travel to California with their entries: student-designed vehicles, powered by mousetraps, whose performance will be measured for power, speed and accuracy.

The competition is designed to test students’ creativity as well as their command of physics and mathematics principles. The curriculum behind the competition is mapped to the appropriate grade level standards. Other aspects of the competition require a display preparation, a technical paper, and an oral presentation to a panel of engineers. Boeing, Raytheon, SBC Communications and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are among the entities supplying this year’s judges.

In addition to the competition, the students will attend workshops on college preparation and admissions. They also will be treated to a visit to Disneyland and participate in a California-style barbecue at the beach.

This is not the first year Spokane MESA students have competed at the national level. Last year’s winning Spokane high school team placed second in the MESA USA National Engineering Design Competition in Albuquerque, N.M.  The same team (made up of students from North Central High School and Lewis & Clark High School) will travel with the Salk Middle School team to compete again this year in Irvine.

The program at the Spokane MESA Center provides math and science support to 400 pre-college students annually in Spokane School District 81. Kirk Reinkens, MESA high school coordinator, worked with the teams’ MESA teachers in preparing the students for competition.

The goal of MESA is to provide globally competitive and individually competent students in mathematics, engineering and science with full participation of under-represented students, including African-Americans, Hispanics, American Indians and women. MESA USA is a partnership of MESA programs in Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington.

Web sites:

Spokane MESA: www.mesa.spokane.wsu.edu
High School Teams Converge for WSU Spokane MESA Competition (March 21, 2005): https://wsunews.wsu.edu/detail.asp?StoryID=5108
Spokane MESA High School team 2nd at Nationals (Aug. 5, 2004): https://www.spokane.wsu.edu/News&Events/bulletins/bulletin04/August5.asp