Monday, December 20, 2010

Great year for Mendota Jr. High MESA!

So far this year  Mesa has been very exciting. Most of the students are looking forward to the competitions, prelims, the Saturday academies, banquet, and for the trips we get to go to.

Our leadership team has been very successful in encouraging students to do their best we all try to set good examples for the rest of the students we’re all working very hard in getting things done and making commitments for Mesa. We’re hoping for a great interesting year with the students that have never been in Mesa.

Leadership Retreat

Once the school year began we had a parent night which was very successful in many ways we got the parents interested in Mesa and got them informed in what Mesa’s about and about how important it is for their children and how they get to attend four Saturday academies and about their career path. So far, we made bridges out of marshmallows and toothpicks. There was a small competition between students and their parents. We’ve had over 50 members so far.

 Parent Night
                
We were fundraising by selling chocolate boxes and selling stuff at a school dance. We also were giving prizes to the students that sold chocolate boxes. We sold things like chips, nachos, and popcorn etc.

 Prize Winners
                          
The first thing we got to work with was mechanical drafting for about five weeks. It was very challenging for most students but they still did their best. We also got to have competition working on windmill, which was very successful. Our next competition is bridges we’ve been working on them for about one week.

The first Saturday academy was fun everyone was excited and interested in what new activities there was this year although, most students were looking forward to going to the first three academies we had a lot of fun. Most students try to attend four Saturday academies. Everyone is getting prepared for prelims they’re all ready for competition. It takes a lot of work and commitment, but we could handle it. We hope to have a wonderful year in Mesa, and hope to join next year.

Saturday Academy Group

Monday, December 6, 2010

2nd & 3rd Saturday Acadmies

 
We've been busy at MESA the last month with our 2nd and 3rd Saturday Academies. Our 2nd Academy- held right before Thanksgiving- turned into a great day despite some morning rain. Middle school students built bridges, cars, boats, robots and more and also got to develop their leadership skills. High school students launched rockets, learned about electronics and engineering design, and built robots, in addition to learning about college and opportunities in engineering. Our 3rd Academy was just this past weekend, and it was another fun day. We were lucky to have an engineer come from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab to talk about her experiences with different missions. It was very cool to hear- first hand- about the exploration of outer space. All of our students also got to work on hands-on projects: from hot air balloons and gliders to lasers and earthquake engineering. Thanks to all the students, advisors, and volunteers who made each day possible. We're done with all our fall semester activities now, but are busy getting ready for our spring Academy and competitions!

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Exciting year for Hoover MESA

Hoover Mesa is off to a great start this year. We have been busy getting as many members involved in Mesa as possible. We have more than 60 members enrolled this year with almost a fourth of them freshmen. We are excited to have Mr. Ureno as a new advisor. He joins Mrs. Denbesten and Mr. Bellis.

We have meetings every Tuesday at lunch. At the meetings we do little projects to get people excited for Saturday academies. We have done paper bridges and paper airplanes. We sign people up for Saturday academies and plan for future events. We had a work day over Thanksgiving break to work on our projects. We have also had study sessions for the SAT math portion. We are having a contest to design a new t-shirt for Hoover Mesa.

We have had almost all of our member go to at least one Saturday academy. At the latest one we had people place first and second in marble coasters, first in propeller boats, and first in calculus team math. We are planning to have a day to work on the online academy.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

MESA is Busy at LBHS!

As we enter our 3rd year at Los Banos High School, the MESA program has been off to a great start this year.  We’ve done many things so far into the school year such as doing our Bake Sales at Home football games, to partnering up with other clubs that go on field trips that promote education.  Also, this year we had some changes.  We transitioned to having one Advisor, changed the times we have meetings, and having new leadership members that are new to the club ready and eager to learn the MESA ways. Despite some of the changes we have had, our MESA program is up & running and even better than before.

On September 21st we had our Parent Orientation Meeting.  There we informed parents what MESA was about and the benefits it has in their children’s academic & career path.  It was a great turnout seeing so many parents attending interested in their child’s learning path.

This year we have a total of 55 fully enrolled members, some which are new and returning members.  We have our leadership meetings every Monday during lunch and our MESA meetings every Tuesday during lunch which is done & presented by the leadership team.  Our meetings have been a success having many members attending.  Adding to this our leadership team & advisor are working hard each week to make our club a success.

Just recently some of our MESA Members took a trip last week with the Environmental Club to Yosemite National Park.  There students had the opportunity to explore the valley floor or go on a hike to the top of Vernal Falls.  It was a breathe taking sight seeing the entire natural scene around us. 

During the month of October we did some interesting new things. For instance we found a new way of fundraising money for our club.  At our school we have green recycling bins around the whole campus.  We asked the school if we can recycle them since other clubs were doing the same.  So that whole month we collected and sorted cans out.  Also, our school held its first Halloween Carnival which different clubs from the schools set up booths promoting their club & having students participate in their booths activity.  We had students play “Pin the Hat on the Witch” or do a crossword/word search and sold some lollipop ghosts that we made.

Although this is our 3rd year as a MESA group, we’ve done some pretty interesting things.  If it weren’t for the leadership team & our advisor working hard to keep this program running we wouldn’t know what else to do and of course the help and support of our MESA members.

Hope you enjoy what our MESA school site has done to spread and spark the interest of future coming leaders.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Citrus MESA- 80 members and growing!

So far this year in MESA it has been interesting and exciting. When the school year began we had a straw tower competition to convince students to join. We currently have over 80 members.

We formed an awesome leadership group, some of whom went to CSU Fresno for training in September.

In MESA elective class we started out creating project posters and presenting the rules.  We have practiced engineering skills with paper towers and another fun competition where the only materials were spaghetti noodles and marshmallows.  We applied the principals of bridge building with KNeX and then made Manila File Folder Bridges for competition.

For the first Saturday Academy we took close to 30 students.  They participated in many activities and one of them won 2nd place in the Rube Goldberg competition.   Our goal for the next academy is to take at least 40 members.


Ten of our 8th grade students are traveling to Catalina Island with Fresno MESA.  They are all looking forward to the trip.

Monday, October 25, 2010

1st Saturday Academy

Thanks to all students, advisors, and volunteers who participated in our first Saturday Academy of the year! We had about 500 middle and high school students from around the Central Valley on the Fresno State campus for the event. After taking a math test, our students worked on some great projects- including rockets, robots, solar ovens, bridges, soldering, and more.


We're always amazed to see how much creativity and hard work goes into each project. Thanks to our college student volunteers and advisors who helped run all of the sessions and to our MESA student leaders who served as mentors and helpers throughout the day. Now we're looking forward to our next Academy, which is going to be on November 20.

Friday, October 15, 2010

A Busy Start

This past moth has been pretty busy for MESA here at Dinuba High School.  We have had some small in club competitions to try and make the tallest tower out of a piece of paper and a couple of inches of tape. We all had lots of fun.  And also, thanks to Kristin, we had fun doing a boat competition where we had to make a boat and see how many pennies it could hold.

 

Besides the small competitions, we also put together two types of robots, a lego robot and a VEX robot.  We all enjoyed putting them together and had a good time just being with each other.  During our Club Fair, we used the VEX robot as advertisement and there was many people who thought it was cool and are considering joining us soon.

  
We had a bit of trouble trying to sign everyone up for the Saturday Academies but had  success in the number of people going compared to last year.  We have put together the design for our shirts and we all can't wait for them to get here.  Maybe all of you guys will be able to see them at the next Saturday Academy.  We also are looking forward to our amazing trips planned to go and visit colleges.  Also, one of our members is trying to get Burt Rutan to come and speak to our community.  If he agrees, it would be a wonderful experience for all of us.  He is an aerospace engineer from here in Dinuba that is known for designing the Voyager.  Well, can't wait to read all of the different MESA blogs.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Go Rafer MESA!

The MESA Club and elective class at Rafer Johnson Jr. High has been up to a lot lately. We sponsored a back-to-school dance as our main fundraiser for the year. Hard-working MESA students planned the dance, made posters and flyers, painted decorations, and set up for the dance. The dance theme was a pajama party (Pajammin' Dance), and students came dressed in their pajamas, ate snacks hung out with friends, and many students also participated in a pillow fight competition inside a bounce house! The dance raised over $1,500 for Rafer's MESA program.

Currently, we have been working on building bridges. Preparation for our bridges included taking Cornell notes on bridge design and forces acting on a bridge, as well as working on building spaghetti bridges. Students learned the two major scientific causes of bridge failure; compression and tension. We look forward to a visit from the CSU Fresno MESA staff next week, when our bridge specifications will be checked and they will be tested for strength. We will figure out which bridges will win the competition by plugging the numbers into a formula to find the strength-to-weight ratio.



We have also been working on getting all of our MESA students enrolled on line and signing up for our first Saturday Academy. It took awhile to get everybody signed up with the new system, but we were able to get a lot of help from Mr. Lopez, Ms. McCoy, and Ms. Prieto, and now we are happy to say that all of our elective students have completed their registration and are signed up for the first Saturday Academy. Most students are excited to pick their own workshops this year, and we look forward to seeing the MESA students from other schools, learning new things in workshops, and eating in the student union.

In the near future, Rafer MESA students will join together with MESA students from Kingsburg High School to participate in an astronomy field trip with Mr. Harness. Ten 8th graders from our class are also looking forward to the upcoming Catalina Island Marine Institute trip in November. We have submitted a t-shirt idea to a printer, and we will hopefully have our Rafer MESA t-shirts ready soon. Go, Rafer MESA!

Monday, September 27, 2010

Student Leadership Retreat

Thanks to all of our student leaders who attended the Student Leadership Retreat this past weekend! We did some fun activities as well as some hard work.  After talking about what it means to be a leader and learning about the year's activities, each school group had some time to do some individual planning. The day ended with a campus scavenger hunt. (It turned out to be a pretty hot day, but everyone- including advisors- still gave a great effort!)


This year's leaders will be responsible for helping their advisors run their MESA programs, recruiting students, planning activities, organizing fundraisers, assisting at events at Fresno State, and much more. We're really looking forward to working with them this year! 

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Competitions & Field Trips

Welcome back everyone! Here at LBJHS, we have had a very busy beginning of the year! 

Parent Orientation Night
On August 19, 2010 MESA at LBJHS held a parent orientation night. The purpose of this event was to show the parent’s what we do in MESA and to teach them the expectations of the students. The event turned out pretty well, both the English and Spanish sessions having high attendance and participation rates. When the parents and students got to the orientation night they had to compete in an engineering competition. The objective of this competition was to build the tallest tower using straws and a limited amount of tape (1 meter). Everyone tried really hard, but of course some did better than others. The top three of these people were as follows.

1st place: Alicia and Family 213cmo
2nd place: Khang and Family 207cm
3rd place: Tristin and Family 186cm

Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to all the parents and students for participating and to all the people who took time out of their day to help in this event.

Bridges
On Tuesday September 7, 2010, the MESA students at Los Banos Junior High School competed in the first MESA project, the bridge. The results were as follow:

Stick Together
1st Jimmy and TJ
2nd Jake and Patricia

Manila Mechanics
1st Lily and Ashley
2nd Dario and Mystique
3rd. Jacob and Orlando

Congratulations to everyone who participated, there were some very beautiful bridges.

 


Monterey Trip
On September 9, 2010, the eighth graders attended the Monterey trip to the National Weather Station and CSU Monterey Bay.  We explored the NWS (National Weather Station) and learned about weather and meteorology.  Also located there was a naval station.  It gives weather reports to our troops worldwide and it has the software capability to pinpoint a man who has fallen overboard a ship within thirty feet.  Then, we visited CSU Monterey Bay.  It was a reasonably small and new campus.  CSUMB was built upon a military base.  As a reward for being well behaved, Mr. Wilson took us to the beach.  It was cold, but still fun and refreshing.



Tinkertoy Windmill
Mrs. Mascorro and Mr. Wilson selected the windmill teams for their classes. The windmill were tested and currently the 1st place team is composed of Tim, Marco, Yadira and Yessenia, 2nd place team is made up of Hector, Edgar, James, Kellen and the 3rd place team has Andrea, Alejandro, Henry and Tristin. Unfortunately, not everyone is excited to write the technical papers, do oral presentations and display boards, so some of the teams might change a bit. We would love to get the State level this year!

We hope you all have a great time in MESA this year.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Welcome to the 2010-2011 School Year!

Welcome to the new location for our MESA Student Blog! Here you can meet some of our students, check out what our schools are doing, and learn more about our activities. We'll add a new entry- written by a new MESA school- every couple of weeks.Our schools and students have lots of great things planned this year, so we hope you'll visit us often to see what everyone is doing! You can also visit the CSU Fresno MESA Program's home page by clicking here.