UPDATE [04/01/2025, 9:44 p.m.] This article has been updated to remove brackets from a quote from Millie Figueroa and correct the spelling of Cuauhtemoc Solorio.

Local middle and high school students presented S.T.E.M. projects and engaged in informational workshops at UC Santa Barbara’s College Destination Day on March 8. As part of a growing 26-year tradition, the campus invited local youth, primarily first-generation students, to learn about future career options and gain college exposure.

Over 400 students from 10 high schools and eight middle schools in Oxnard, Santa Paula, Camarillo and more attended the event. Courtesy of Jamie Nunez Ramirez

Mathematics, Engineering, Science, Achievement (MESA) is a University of California-wide college and career preparatory program that provides academic enrichment for students from “educationally, economically, and geographically challenged schools,” according to the UCSB Office of Educational Partnerships. 

College Destination Day, otherwise known as “MESA Day,” is when students are invited to participate in an all-day event featuring learning sessions on S.T.E.M topics and enter their projects into competition categories and has been held every year since 1999.

Los Ingenieros (The Engineers), a UCSB student organization that helps promote math, science and engineering education to the Latino/a community, co-hosted the event alongside the student organization, MESA. They also provide outreach activities to schools in the surrounding Santa Barbara communities in S.T.E.M. subjects, such as a mentorship program with schools and Noche de Ciencias (Science Night) to students of all grade levels, ranging from elementary to high school. 

The goal of MESA Day’s message, according to the student organizers, is to be the spark in students’ minds to pursue higher education and a career in S.T.E.M. 

“We try to strive to bring underrepresented students, to try to bring them to campus, have them compete or try to learn about competitions, to try to encourage them to be more into the S.T.E.M. field. And then hopefully, when they do go to college, they apply for something in S.T.E.M,” Los Ingenieros Internal Vice Chair and fourth-year computer engineering major Eliseo Zamora Aguilar said. 

In 2022-2023, UCSB admissions profile showed 28% of newly admitted freshmen identified as Hispanic/Latinx/Chicanx and 48% of Latino/a freshmen chose to study physical and biological sciences. 

Cuauhtemoc Solorio, MESA K-12 program director, is one of the key organizers. This year is the first time he organized the event, and he said that he wants students to take away the bigger picture of MESA Day.

“I want [students] to take it all in, to be present, not just to go into a workshop … We also have a college access program anywhere from college and career exposure, identifying how they could pay for college and identifying other resources on college campuses,” Solorio said.

Over 400 students from 10 high schools and eight middle schools in Oxnard, Santa Paula, Camarillo and more attended the event. Students moved between multiple locations on campus including Buchanan Hall, Broida Hall and the Chemistry Lawn throughout the day. 

Students and parents rotated through workshops led by MESA staff and assisted by volunteers on college readiness such as financial aid opportunities, learning how to save and pay for college, what college classes look like and different pathways that don’t include or start with a four-year institution, such as the transfer student path. 

The competitions are a way for students to participate in MESA Day and develop their ideas to share. The competitions are broken into categories for middle and high school students. Some categories include Cargo Gliders, where students design and construct a glider capable of flight, or Moon Base, where they create a structure designed to house research activities for astronauts.

Students enter their own projects they have worked on since the beginning of the school year in their MESA classes and club chapters for high schools, in preparation for MESA day competitions. Winners were judged based on their competition pieces and their function, as well as the theoretical workbook that explained the function and inner workings of their project. 

Some, including Rio del Valle Middle School, Pacifica High School, Adolfo Camarillo High School and Fremont Academy will compete at a regional competition at California State University, Los Angeles on April 19. 

Among high school students attending the event was Nathan Ruiz, a senior from Pacifica High School in Oxnard. His competition piece was a mobile app developed to connect underserved families of autistic individuals with resources for support and assistance. 

“I’ve definitely learned some new things to help advance my communication skills, especially with presenting and pitching some things like products. And from this experience, I definitely learned more about app development and it’s definitely something I see pursuing in the future,” Ruiz said.

Madhumitha Chandar, a seventh grader from Medea Creek Middle School, said that it matched her interest in science and math, and wanted to see what it was about.

“I thought it was really interesting, and a lot of my friends were doing it, so I decided to compete … I see myself in more competitions, and that might be here,” Chandar said.

Students also said they enjoyed the other themes of MESA regarding college pathways.

“Getting to experience how [college students] are in college…and what they do here, like in engineering,” Millie Figueroa, a seventh grader from Isbell Middle School said.

Many students explored different fields through S.T.E.M. experiments presented at tables and other student organizations. Solorio said it was an important component for MESA Day to be held at UCSB and other colleges. 

Students like Ruiz mentioned that MESA introduced fields in science and math they had not considered before. 

“I was kinda scared of [MESA], but as I worked with them and saw how passionate they were with the work in the project they were working on, it made me feel more able to do and research this because I know that these people will help me with whatever I need,” Ruiz said. 

The main goal of the event was to motivate the future generation of students in S.T.E.M. and lead by example, Los Ingenieros internal vice-chair and third-year mechanical engineering major Jamie Nunez Ramirez said.

“I was once a high school student competing in these competitions myself, and it’s one of the main things that attracted me to UCSB. I felt included, I felt seen here and [it] inspired me to go into engineering. As a Latina in S.T.E.M., there’s not that much representation. Coming to this type of event just made me feel seen and motivated to pursue my passion of my interest in engineering,” Nunez Ramirez said.

Keynote speaker Martin Enriquez, Global DevSecOps Manager at HP, is a UCSB alum and a founder of Los Ingenieros who is heavily involved in each year’s MESA Day. Being from Santa Paula, he is one of the individuals the organizers bring back from the community to engage with students who attend MESA Day. 

Organizers Solorio, Aguilar and Nunez Ramirez said they’d like the program to grow and expand, whether in competition contestants or expanding outreach. Specifically when asked about development, Nunez Ramirez suggested more groups like young girls to be involved in S.T.E.M. 

“In the future for this particular event, if there are Hispanic or Latina students interested in S.T.E.M. for them to have specific workshops to attend to explore those options more and get that representation in the field,” Nunez Ramirez said.

Reflecting on the event and how much it has grown, Solorio also expressed the impact of MESA Day. 

“To be able to be a part of something like that, to me, that’s huge, right, especially for the middle schoolers … [they] start breaking that culture shock and making it so that even though they’re not directly here, they’re already developing that [college] culture within themselves,” Solorio said.