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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!