Thursday — June 29, 2006

9-11 a.m.

Engineering West Lobby

(2220 E. San Ramon — access from Barstow Ave. at Campus Drive or Jackson)

(Additional competition may beheld from noon to 1 p.m. on the morning progress)

Sumobots will rock the campus this morning when students in the Migrant Scholars Program at California State University, Fresno hold a competition to demonstrate what they learned in their robotics course the past two weeks.

Instruction for eight classes in the first of three two-week sessions culminates today. An awards ceremony in which the projects will be showcased will be held tomorrow.

In the robotics course taught by Fresno State electrical engineering student Harim Martinez and recent graduate Eric Vasquez, students designed and built a sumobot, learning about computer software and how to write programming code. The students use what they’ve learned to program their robot and to develop a Web page. Harim and Vasquez are participants in the university’s Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement (MESA) program at Fresno State.

The two-week sessions involve 167 students from Fresno, Clovis, Fowler, West Fresno, Coalinga, Kings Canyon, Sanger and Mendota Unified School Districts. Each district has a topic assigned. The robotics course involves Clovis students.

The second 2006 session is July 3 to July 14 and the third runs from July 17 to 29. An awards ceremony in which all projects are demonstrated is held at the end of each session. The first ceremony will be Friday, June 30, at the Satellite Student Union from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

See original press release at FresnoStateNews.com for more details about the Migrant Scholars Program. http://fresnostatenews.com/2006/06/migrantscholars.htm

Program contact: Raul Z. Moreno 559.269.2642 (or 278.5750) Robotics contact: Harim Martinez 559. 213.1219