Sixth Annual MESA USA National Engineering Design Competition

UC Irvine to Co-host MESA National Engineering Competition

with Cal State Fullerton

Formal Welcome:
Friday, June 23, 5:30 pm
Aldrich Park at UC Irvine

Performance Trials of Projects:
Saturday, June 25, 12:30 - 2:30 p.m.
Titan Gymnasium, CSU Fullerton

Final Awards:
Sunday, June 25, 8:30 – 10:30 a.m.
Crowne Plaza Hotel - 179491 Von Karman, Irvine, CA
Breakfast to be served.

Information About the Event:
Outstanding middle and senior high school student teams from eight states will be traveling to UC Irvine to compete in a three-day National Engineering Design Competition sponsored by the MESA USA program. The event will be held on June 23-25, 2006.

A formal welcome will take place on Friday, June 23 at 5:30 pm in Aldrich Park at UC Irvine, which is co-sponsoring the event with CSU Fullerton. The final awards will be announced at a breakfast from 8:30 – 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 25, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, 179491 Von Karman, Irvine, Calif.

Performance trials of the projects, which are student-designed vehicles powered by household mousetraps, will take place at the Titan Gymnasium on Saturday, June 25 from 12:30 - 2:30 p.m. at CSU Fullerton.  The mousetrap cars will be tested for power, speed and accuracy.

The contest was developed to challenge students’ creativity while testing their command of physics and math principles. The curriculum behind the contest is mapped to appropriate grade level standards. The competition also requires preparation of an academic display, a technical paper, and an oral presentation.

MESA, which stands for Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement, provides academic support for educationally disadvantaged students so they can excel in math, engineering and science. The MESA pre-college program at UC Irvine, part of California MESA, serves 800 educationally disadvantaged students at 12 middle and senior high schools. California MESA supports 16,000 pre-college students across the state.

MESA is a partnership of MESA programs in Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington.

For more information, please contact:

Jaime Del Razo, jdelrazo@uci.edu
(949) 824-1578 or (310) 955-7261