Mescalero students excited about MESA competitions

Mescalero students excited about MESA competitions
Ashley Ivins For the Ruidoso News
Posted: 09/21/2010 07:23:09 PM MDT



(MESA Advisor Eleanor Pedraza looks at the "Crimson Flyer" with Mathew Naiche. Ashley...)
At 6 on a Saturday morning, most teenagers are sleeping. On a recent Saturday, Sept. 11, at 6 a.m., 33 students from Mescalero Apache Schools brand new MESA (Math, Engineering, and Science Achievement) program were on a bus and headed to Las Cruces.

The Mescalero MESA students attended the BEST (Boosting Science Engineering and Technology) Robotics Kickoff at the New Mexico State University College of Engineering.

The 2010-11 school year will be the first time that Mescalero Apache School students have participated in robotics competitions and the enthusiasm for their opening competition isn't hard to see considering that Mescalero Schools had the largest group of students in attendance for the kickoff this year.

The students were eager to get started on the actual design, but first they had to learn about the basics of the competition which doesn't only require building a robot but also creating an engineering report, a display booth, a presentation and preparation for interviews during the competition.

This year the competition theme is called "Total Recall" and the robot, which is remote controlled and built from scratch with only the provided materials, has to package gizmos and gadgets in a factory production type scene.

To make things more challenging, the students have only five weeks to complete the robot before attending a practice day and then an additional week to make any adjustments before the final competition in Las Cruces.

During their visit to NMSU, the students also got to learn about some of the activities that NMSU engineering students participate in such as the Crimson Flyer team that built a model airplane that had to perform three different tasks for competition.
A demonstration by the Mini Baja team really got their attention when the driver showing the Baja buggies abilities made an "analysis error" going into a ramp that ended in a roll! Thankfully the driver was safe and engineering instantly became more interesting to many students.

The vision of the BEST Robotics organization is to excite our nation's students about engineering, science and technology to unlock their imagination and discover their potential.

Their vision is to inspire students to pursue careers in engineering, science, technology and math through participation in a sports-like science- and engineering-based robotics competition.

Team leaders emerged as senior Laramy Baca, and juniors Danny Rios and Godfrey Enjady took the reins during inventory time to ensure the high school team had all of the supplies on their equipment lists.

On the middle school team Jaylen Duffy, Desi Cervantes and Timothy Enjady took command. The middle school team also came up with the team name "Robo Chiefs" at the kickoff. These students and their dedicated teammates are currently looking for volunteers/mentors to assist them with design and fabrication as well as programming. The teams are also seeking organizations that would be interested in allowing them to present their project to them as part of the outreach component of the competition during the next five weeks.

Last but not least, the teams need corporate sponsors to help finance travel, lodging and meals for competition, team shirts, and a laptop computer to use for programming.

If you are interested in volunteering, sponsoring or hosting a presentation, please contact advisors Ashley Ivins, aivins-@mescaleroas.org ; Eleanor Pedraza, epedraza@mesca-leroas.org ; or Rosalinda Baeza- rbaeza@mescalero-as.org.