Future engineers honored

By Phil Witte
Daily Forty-Niner

The College of Engineering honored 24 future mathematicians, engineers and computer programmers for completing a summer program at Cal State Long Beach.

The students honored at a small ceremony Saturday attend Long Beach Polytechnic and Cabrillo high schools and completed a new program through the Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement program. The program is designed to give middle-and-high school students specialized tutoring to help them and prepare for collegiate studies, said Linda Diggs-Taylor, associate dean of the college of engineering.

In this part of the program, the 24 students spent two weeks at CSULB in the summer, learning computer programming skills and web design using the software program Dreamweaver. Raytheon sponsored the program where the students met in a classroom that was designed for it.

"The program this summer was very successful," Diggs said. "We hope to continue the summer program in addition to the year-round program where our tutors and staff work with students at the high schools."

In conjunction with the program, tutors from CSULB help students at the local high schools three times a week, Diggs said.

"What the students get out of the program is the chance to do project-based work, such as the steam propulsion project my students worked on," said Cabrillo High School science teacher Graham Robertson. "The tutors, mostly graduate students, also become friends and role models to the students and they bring personal experiences for personal success."

Cabrillo High School senior Alex Gonzales is already putting his experience to use.

"I've used what I learned to get a job designing a company's web page and I'm going to use the extra money for college," Gonzales said. "I think the best part of the program is that the hands-on experience is better than learning from a book. The tutors give us pointers on which direction to go to solve a problem and almost always know the right answers."

Long Beach Polytechnic High sophomore Siandra Palacio liked the experience on campus this summer.

"I liked that we got to see what we can use on campus," Palacio said. "The tutors are already telling us to get information from colleges."

The summer program was a first for CSULB.

"We would like to do a longer program as long as students are interested and the teachers are excited," said program director Saba Yohannes-Rede. "We would like to do the computer training, not just in the summer but after school year-round, but right now we can only schedule 24 students at a time."

• President gives words of wisdo
• Radio personality's apology hollow