CSUB hosts annual Engineering Day

400 high school students visit campus to learn about engineering programs, careers

By California State University, Bakersfield

March 3^rd, 2025

The field of engineering is vast, with so many possible paths that it can be overwhelming for students to know what they might like to pursue. Through its annual Engineering Day, California State University, Bakersfield sought to shed some light and offer perspective to help future engineers find their way forward.

Around 400 students from local high schools came to campus on Feb. 21 for Engineering Day, held this year in the Doré Theatre. The College of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering hosts the event every year as part of National Engineers Week in an effort to inspire the next generation.

“Kern County needs more engineers; we need more innovators and problem solvers who will shape the future of our community,” Dr. Jane Dong, dean of NSME, told the students. “As the only four-year university in the area that offers ABET-accredited engineering programs, we take great pride in our responsibility to inspire, to educate and to create opportunities for young minds like yours.”

Dr. Amin Malek — an associate professor in CSUB’s Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science — led a presentation explaining why students interested in engineering should view their neighborhood university as their top choice. In addition to staying close to home, saving money, getting hands-on research experience and having the opportunity to earn engineering certifications for free, Dr. Malek also emphasized the importance of CSUB’s small class sizes.

“This gives us time to interact with the students,” Dr. Malek said. “This gives us time to answer your questions, discuss, debate. We make sure you are not leaving class with a question. We make sure that we leave class when you are completely clear for every single topic we discussed during that class.”

Students also heard from Dr. Jonathan Hoy, a research scientist for the Air Force Research Lab working in the Combustion Devices Branch at Edwards Air Force Base. Dr. Hoy spoke about some of his projects and how trial and error is an important part of any engineering field.

Edwards is “basically out in the middle of the desert and there’s a very good reason for that,” Dr. Hoy told the students. “When we test rockets, particularly in early stages, they have this bad habit of blowing up. And so, we don't want people get hurt when they blow up.”

Accepting failure as part of the learning process was also a topic touched on by a panel of CSUB engineering alumni.

“Every engineer is going to fail at some point in their life, but I wouldn't consider it a failure because you're always going to learn from that mistake, so it’s just an opportunity,” said Maria Renteria, who graduated from CSUB in 2018 and now works as a mechanical engineer at Wonderful Pistachios & Almonds.

Renteria was joined on the alumni panel by Jenna Bunag (Class of 2016), a project engineer at California Bioenergy; Kalyn Dunham (Class of 2020), a systems engineer at Serban Sound & Communications; Sandra Peters (Class of 2018), an electronics engineer at Edwards Air Force Base; and Alfredo Arevalo (Class of 2020), an instrumentation operations engineer at Edwards Air Force Base. Each spoke about why decided to pursue a career in engineering.

“I chose to become an engineer to find a way to serve my community,” Dunham said. “The fun part is that I am challenged every day … but also the hard part is it's a new challenge. I might not know where the problem is, because there could be many points of failure of where my technology is messing up or where things are implemented.”

The panelists all said CSUB being close to home and affordable were big factors in their decision to attend the university, but they found even more reasons why it was the best choice for them, like the small class sizes and the relationships they formed with professors. Bunag mentioned that the small community at CSUB and Bakersfield gave her a network of peers and mentors that benefited her career.

“I think the five of us up here are a great example of that: we come from the small school, the cheaper school, but we all competed with kids from UCLA, from Berkeley, from Fullerton, SLO,” she said. “All those schools out there, and we’re sitting here advocating for you guys to come here.”

Dr. Jane Dong, dean of the College of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering, welcomes students to Engineering Day. (Photo by Kelly Ardis)

Dr. Amin Malek tells students about CSUB's engineering programs. (Photo by Kelly Ardis)

Dr. Jonathan Hoy tells students about his work at the Air Force Research Laboratory. (Photo by Kelly Ardis)

CSUB engineering alumni speak about their experience at CSUB and in the engineering workforce. (Photo by Arthur Schneider)

Before visiting students left, they had the opportunity to meet with potential employers at the Engineering Career Education Fair.

Lorenzo Moran, a counselor from Mira Monte High School, brought 18 students to Engineering Day. He hoped the students would leave the event with a greater understanding of engineering.

“This is a great opportunity for students to get exposed to what engineering is and what it is that engineers do, and that's important because a lot of times these students don't have a perception of it or what it means, because there are different fields of engineering,” he said. “Hopefully they can broaden their horizons and dream big and pursue those degrees that are going to be beneficial for them and as well for us as a society as a whole.”

Alexsa Yates, a junior at Taft High School, is interested in engineering and art. In the future, she’d like to design buildings or paint. She found Engineering Day “very informational.”

“It gave me a better perspective of everything that’s available to me and what I could go into,” she said.

Ali Matney, a junior at Highland High School, is considering studying sports psychology or engineering in college. A soccer player with hopes of becoming a collegiate athlete, Matney wasn’t sure yet where she’d like to go for college, but she is considering CSUB. Within engineering, Matney is drawn to the designing and project aspects of the field.

“It definitely helped seeing what everyone else did in engineering and the pathways they took, just as options for me looking forward to the future,” she said of Engineering Day. One of the lessons she took away from the event was “it’s okay not to know exactly what field of engineering you want to go into, and that oftentimes, that will sort itself out throughout your college classes.”

Dr. Andrea Medina, NSME’s director of grants and outreach, was pleased with this year’s Engineering Day, an event her team works hard to present annually.

“Engineering Day was a great success,” she said. “It was fun to see the students so engaged and talking to the speakers, alumni and employers. I hope this event gets them excited about pursuing engineering, and that they will consider CSUB a first choice when they apply for college in the future.”

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Footnotes

Story by Kelly Ardis, communications specialist, College of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering (NSME); Photos by Arthur Schneider, multimedia student assistant; Abel Núñez-Guerrero, Outreach & Community College Coordinator for NSME; and Kelly Ardis