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McCabe Junior High School MESA advisor David Sackrison poses
with national champions (left to right) Edgar Juarez, Francisco
Torres, Angel Hernandez and Adelmo Alvarado as they show off the
first place trophy won at the MESA national engineering design
competition in Maryland. |
Elected officials and state
education leaders from California State University, Fresno and the
central San Joaquin Valley will honor some new national champions today.
Not the Fresno State baseball team this time, but rather the McCabe
Junior High School MESA team from Mendota that won a national
engineering design competition in Baltimore, Md., last month.
McCabe students Adelmo Alvarado, Edgar Juarez, Francisco Torres and
Angel Hernandez represented California at the Mathematics, Engineering,
Science Achievement (MESA) National Finals at the University of Maryland
on June 20-21. They beat other teams from across the country to win the
junior high school division competition.
On Thursday, the Fresno State MESA Schools Program will join the Mendota
Unified School Board in honoring the national champs, their advisers and
families at a 5 p.m. banquet at Mendota High School.
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McCabe team members
and theirwinning trebuchet project.
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The McCabe students
participated in California MESA, a statewide program that supports 850
educationally disadvantaged students so they can go to college and major
in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. McCabe is
one of 11 high schools and 11 middle schools near Fresno served by the
MESA center headquartered at Fresno State. There are 60 centers in
California.
Expected to join Mendota officials honoring the McCabe team are state
Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell, Deputy
Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Dr. Anthony Monreal,
Fresno County Office of Education Superintendent Larry Powell, Fresno
State MESA Joint Advisory Board President Dr. Jerry Valadez, California
MESA Executive Director/MESA USA President Dr. Oscar Porter and Dr.
Michael Jenkins, dean of the College of Engineering at Fresno State.
Mendota officials include Mayor Robert Silva, Mendota Unified Board
President Miguel Arias, and Superintendent Gilbert Rossette.
David Sackrison, McCabe’s industrial technology teacher and MESA
adviser, and Fresno State MESA director Louie Lopez, who traveled to
Baltimore with the team, also will be honored.
The competition called for students to build a trebuchet, a siege engine
similar to a catapult. The junior high entries were evaluated for
distance and accuracy and teams had to submit papers, develop an exhibit
and provide oral presentations to demonstrate their knowledge of the
principles behind their machines.
The Mendota students earned the right to represent California in a
series of competitions that culminated with state finals in May at
Fresno State. They began work on their project in November, putting in
more than 200 hours of personal time to test and refine their trebuchet.
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