By JAY WILSON
On Nov. 8, the Henry Cluster STEMM Foundation sponsored 23 engineering students from Patrick Henry High School and their teacher Craig Olsson as participants in the annual SDSU STEM Exploration Day. This annual event included students from a number of high schools throughout San Diego County. The event was hosted at SDSU’s Pathways Office of the Pre-College Institute, which promotes college access and completion for underserved students through excellence and innovation in education. This was an opportunity for SDSU to demonstrate the opportunities available to students in the field of science and engineering.
Last year, the HC STEMM Foundation was asked by Dr. Cynthia Park, the executive director of the Pre-College Institute, to sponsor students from Patrick Henry, and we were asked to participate again this year. Working again with Olsson, an outstanding staff member of the engineering department at Patrick Henry, an orientation meeting was held in his classroom for interested students. All who attended the orientation participated in this year’s STEM Exploration Day at SDSU. The students attended three sessions.
In the first session, employees from Illumina, the San Diego firm specializing in sequencing and array-based solutions for analysis of genetic variation and function in fields ranging from cancer research to agriculture, gave an overview of the company and the very positive impact it is having on genetic research. Our students were also able to go through the process of extracting their own DNA and preparing it for processing.
In the second session, Dr. Eric Frost met our students in the SDSU Visualization Lab and gave a visual example of using near-real-time data for challenges such as predicting weather, paths of wildland fires, hurricanes and pollution to assist people in making decisions much faster and more efficiently than ever before. He also raised the deep privacy concerns of popular applications like TikTok and facial recognition and artificial intelligence.
The third presentation was in mechanical engineering with professor George Youssef. The students participated in several interactive experiments, which included dropping rubber balls into liquid nitrogen and measuring how far they would bounce when thoroughly frozen.
“The students had a great day,” Olsson said. “They really enjoyed the STEM-related activities. I am looking forward to participating in next year’s event with a new group of motivated students.”
— Jay Wilson is a board member of the Henry Cluster STEMM Foundation.
