While many college students cherish their Saturdays as a “day off” from academics, one group of adolescents trades this day off every week to participate in a pre-college program sponsored by N.C. State.
Around 200 middle and high school students competed against each other Saturday morning during the N.C. State Math and Science Education Network’s (MSEN) mini runoff for MSEN Day, an annual math and science competition.
The finalists from the competition will contend against students from the other eight NC-MSEN pre-college programs across the state for the official MSEN Day at the end of April.
For the mini runoff, students were divided into groups and worked on various hands-on projects and exercises, including creating parachute egg drops, water bottle rockets, engineering design and architecture, and robotics. Some students also competed in a quiz bowl, where they tested their knowledge of astronomy, chemistry, history and anatomy, among other subjects.
According to Braska Williams, NC-MSEN Coordinator, the goal of the pre-college program is to be more inclusive towards minority students, such as girls and first-generation college families, and children who come from families where no one is an engineer or scientist.
In addition to making math and science fields appeal more to students, the pre-college program helps with developing communication skills for when they graduate from high school, according to Iris Wagstaff, an N.C. State graduate student and MSEN volunteer.
Wagstaff, who has been working with the program for two semesters and has 20 years of other education outreach experience, said the program incorporates speakers and events like campus tours to educate high school students about college admissions. Additionally, there is a summer program where the students take courses on NCSU’s main campus, which provides an additional feel for life on campus.
“It gives the students an opportunity to have resources they don’t have at their schools,” Wagstaff said.
Assir Abushouk, an N.C. State MSEN student coordinator and sophomore in mathematics education, oversaw a group of students during the parachute egg drop competition, and said by volunteering with the program he hopes to gain classroom management skills.
“The students here are eager to engage and learn, even if it means coming in on Saturdays,” Abushouk said. “Their enthusiasm makes it easier for the teachers.”
Donald McCoy, a robotics teacher for the program and retired IBM employee, said he was very happy to give back to the kids after his work at IBM.
“I want these kids to be engaged in math and science,” McCoy said. “My focus is to make future engineers.”
Williams, also an ’89 N.C. State alumnus and former high school teacher, said he thinks the relations the teachers form with students can often make the biggest impacts, especially for students from low-income backgrounds.
“The program provides a lot of relations with students who may not have family members who say, ‘you should be an engineer,’ or, ‘you should go to college,'” Williams said. “You don’t think long-term when you come from a poor background. You think, ‘how am I going to feed myself today?’ It’s a whole different mindset.”
