Texas Border Business
By Joey Gomez
McALLEN, Texas – The Texas A&M Engineering Academy at South Texas College together with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are offering local high school juniors the chance to connect their academic experience with real-life space exploration, and to encourage an engineering degree.
STC recently hosted NASA’s High School Aerospace Scholars (HAS) program for an informational session, with the goal to introduce Rio Grande Valley students to career pathways in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
“This is really to increase awareness of the opportunities that are available to our students here in the Valley,” said Maricruz Hinojosa, project manager with the Texas A&M Engineering Academy at STC. “I want more students to take advantage of this and maybe even create a pipeline to the academy here at the college.”
The HAS Program is a prestigious online program that gives students the opportunity to gain STEM knowledge from NASA professionals.
The program is a five-month online learning experience for high school juniors related to space exploration, earth science technology and aeronautics, which is set up in three phases.
The first phase is the online course held during the school year and conducted on Saturdays which includes interactive lessons, quizzes, design challenges and optional engineering projects.
If students meet the requirements for the second phase, they then get selected to the “Moonshot,” which is a five-day virtual summer experience where they team up with other students to design hypothetical space missions and receive feedback from NASA scientists and engineers, which then culminates in a design review where students are able to present their mission plans.
The third and final phase is highly selective. Students are invited to an all-expenses paid follow-up residential experience at NASA’s Johnson Space Center for the top-performing teams.
Jakarda Varnado, Ed.D., program specialist with NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement, oversees the program, and attended the informational session at STC.
Varnado said the HAS program is designed to complement STC’s engineering pathways.
“What we are trying to do is create those pathways for these students to ease into engineering,” Varnado said. “Exposure is everything, and really you don’t know what you like or what you don’t like until you try it. All we’re looking for is an interest in STEM and aerospace, and we’ll do the rest.”
Andrew Salinas, a current “jaggie,” in the Texas A&M, STC Engineering Academy, participated in the HAS program in high school and at the time was the only student from the Valley to complete all three phases, including the Moonshot phase and residential experience at NASA.
Salinas was also at the information session and participated in a panel discussion and Q&A with students.
“I have always been astonished by the stars,” said Salinas, who plans to transfer to Texas A&M to study aerospace engineering and hopes to one day work for NASA. “It has always been a dream for me to study the stars, not in an astrophysicist way but through engineering. I dare to ask questions like ‘How can we build better rockets? How can we colonize another planet or even turn them green?’ Motivation can only take you so far. It’s all about determination and dedication.”
