Second-year student Zora Williams is using her voice to bring more mental health and nutrition programming to San Diego Mesa College. Williams was elected president of the college’s Associated Students (AS) for the 2024-2025 academic year and serves as the college’s student representative on the San Diego Community College District Board of Trustees.
Sometimes, you hear a story that makes you want to know more. Kevin Gonzalez has such a story. The last time this story was updated, San Diego Mesa College student Kevin Gonzalez was a 15 year-old heading off to Massachusetts to complete his high school education. In the ensuing years, he has travelled to the other side of the world, built houses, but remained in close contact with his Mesa College professors and connections he made while on campus.
The San Diego Community College District has appointed four new student trustees for the upcoming academic year. Dalia Ramirez (San Diego City College), Zora Williams (San Diego Mesa College), Hailey Hua (San Diego Miramar College), and Haydee Zuniga (San Diego College of Continuing Education), will be sworn in during the June 20 SDCCD Board of Trustees meeting.
January 23, 2018
Shawn Cvetezar and Naylynn Tañón of San Diego Mesa College have been selected as NASA Community Aerospace Scholars (NCAS) and will be participating in an onsite experience this February. NCAS is a highly competitive program that gives community college students the opportunity to meet and work with NASA engineers and scientists.
The first portion of the program – a five week online course – has already been completed by both Cvetezar and Tañón. During the online course, students work through module sets that include quizzes and webinars from NASA experts and other industry professionals in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics). For the final project of the online course, the students could choose from one of three categories: a research paper, design your own mission, or design your own rover. Cvetezar spent over 60 hours on the CAD designs alone for his rover project, and Tañón developed her own proposal for a mission.
The second portion of the program includes an onsite experience. Cvetezar will be visiting NASA Ames Visitor Center in Mountain View, CA and Tañón will be visiting the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. For their onsite experience, students will team up to create fictional “companies” interested in Mars exploration. The companies will create a project and be graded on the quality of their prototype rover, the company’s infrastructure, proposed budget, and their communication and outreach efforts.
Cvetezar is planning to receive his Engineering Associate’s Degree in Fall 2018, with plans to transfer to a four year university afterwards. Tañón is majoring in geophysics and astrophysics with a goal to copmlete a Ph.D. in planetary science. Both Cvetezar and Tañón are enjoying the challenges so far, and both hope this experience will further their goals of eventually working for NASA.
For more information on the NCAS program, please visit NCAS here. For more information about the STEM majors and programs offered at Mesa College, please visit Mesa’s STEM webpage.
Tags: NASA, Engineering, Physics, Mesa College Students, Johnson Space Center, NCAS Scholars, NASA Ames Visitor Center, Astronomy, STEM
Jennifer Nichols Kearns
Director of Communications
jnkearns@sdccd.edu
(619) 388-2759
NASA has selected 40 undergraduate students for the first year of its Europa ICONS (Inspiring Clipper: Opportunities for Next-generation Scientists) internship program, supporting the agency’s Europa Clipper mission. Europa ICONS matches students with mentors from the mission’s science team for a 10-week program to conduct original scientific research on topics related to the mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa.
San Diego Mesa College Alumnus Mario Romero made history as part of a team from Intuitive Machines’ whose uncrewed lander made history Thursday as the first privately owned spacecraft to touch down on the lunar surface. It was also the first U.S. vehicle to accomplish this in more than 50 years. After four years of preparations, the company’s 14-foot-tall Nova-C lander navigated to a spot near the moon’s South Pole. It was the 24th mission to softly land on the moon since 1966. And with it comes a new era of exploration.
The San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation (EDC) named Mesa's Computer Information Science program is now a Verified Program of Computing Talent! Programs were verified as part of a rigorous evaluation process led by Advancing San Diego, the flagship program of EDC's Talent Initiatives, which serves to double the production of skilled workers in San Diego while prioritizing historically underrepresented populations in the innovation economy.
