The 2009 High School Fall Fling was a huge success! Hosted at Colorado State University's Fort Collins Campus and with the help of the Information Science and Technology Center (ISTeC) team, over 250 MESA students and advisers participated in the two day event. On Thursday October 15th, high schools gathered at the Hilton Hotel to participate in the Wind Energy scrimmage, testing preliminary designs as well as brainstorming with peers professional engineers and other experts. Afterwords, the new Cardboard Boat Building Rescue Challenge was held at Moby Pool on the CSU Campus. With floaters and sinkers of all sorts, many teams managed a successful rescue while others sent out S.O.S. calls!

Friday morning was filled with stimulating ISTeC workshops demonstrations such as "Light, Lasers & Optics", “Magic Molecules" and tours of CSU campus facilities. At the ISTeC Luncheon, Colorado MESA was honored to receive the prestigious Afterschool Innovator award from the MetLife Foundation and the Afterschool Alliance. Colorado MESA is one of only six organizations to receive this award.  Senator Michael Bennet and Congresswoman Betsy Markey both gave video testimonials acknowledging MESA's contributions to STEM education and workforce preparation.

Boat Design Challenge Winners

• 1st Place – Wasson High School
  • Yossf Albshara
  • Manna Chen
  • Mark Clagett
  • Mario Collazo
  • Danny DeVinney
  • Juncheng Hou
  • Derek Linan
  • Yang Liu
  • Daniel Schemmel
  • Xuyue Tang
  • Laud Williams
  • Desiree Valdez
• 2nd Place – CEC Middle College
• Karen Bustillos
• David Bonilla
• Miguel Roman
• Michael Nothem
• Lalo Rodriguez
• Basheer Mohamed
• Victor Ayala
• Sadat Castaneda
• Vinh Le
• 3rd Place – Adams City High School
• Jose Vera
• Alberto Flores
• Gregory Anaya
• Shenandoah Revello
• Celso Viurquez
• Leonardo Gomez
• Franklin Williams
• Brian Macias
• Claudia Bustillos
• Brittney Huntington
• Darartu Shafi
• Leslie Contreras
• Ashley Martinez
• Malynda Stonestreet
• Haley Sorenson
• Ruby Castro
• Kayla Bates

Click here to view a complete list of the Boat Building Scores. >>