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‘Welcome to the Future’

CSUB hosts 1,000 high school students for Engineering Day

By California State University, Bakersfield

March 8^th, 2024

Around 1,000 local high school students got a glimpse into their potential future as engineers when they visited the California State University, Bakersfield campus for Engineering Day last month.

Held in the Student Recreation Center gymnasium on February 23, the annual event gave students the opportunity to learn about the university’s engineering programs and the myriad career options those with degrees in the subject can go on to enjoy.

The university’s Engineering Day is part of a wider National Engineers Week celebrated throughout the country. This year’s theme was “Welcome to the Future,” which Dr. Jane Dong — dean of CSUB’s School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering — drew on in her welcome address to the students.

“It actually demonstrates the transformative power of engineering to create a better tomorrow,” Dr. Dong said of the theme. Engineering is “an amazing field of exploration, innovation, invention, discovery … but most importantly engineers bring solutions to problems. Engineers work to make a positive impact on people’s lives.”

Visiting students learned about the three engineering programs they can choose from at CSUB: traditional engineering, computer engineering and electrical engineering. Dr. Andrea Medina, NSME’s director of grants and outreach, told students why they should consider their local university when making plans for their future education.

“What is so different about CSUB compared to the other CSUs?” she asked the crowd. “We’re not impacted, which means you’re going to graduate on time, and you’re going to have smaller class sizes, individualized attention and a lot of opportunities as an undergraduate that students don’t get at any other university.”

The day’s activities included a demonstration by associate professor and electrical engineer Dr. Saeed Jafarzadeh, who explained his process of creating a smart eraser that digitally captures notes written on a white board as it erases them. Omar Samara, a CSUB engineering alum, spoke about his research as a Ph.D. candidate in biological systems engineering at the University of California, Davis.

“The thing that I love most is the opportunity to constantly be growing as an engineer and a person,” Samara said. “There are always new things, new problems, new challenges to overcome, and in order to deal with these things, you have to learn things you normally wouldn’t have thought of.”

Dr. Jane Dong, Dean of the School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering, welcomes the crowd.

Dr. Saeed Jafarzadeh tells students about his smart eraser project.

Omar Samara introduces himself to a crowd of 1,000 high school students.

Samara was later joined on stage by Maria Renteria (Wonderful Pistachios & Almonds), Carlos Romero (GAF Roofing), and Alfredo Arrevalo and Sandra Peters (both from Edwards Air Force Base) for an alumni panel, where they each answered questions about their experience at CSUB and their careers today.

“My journey to engineering wasn’t necessarily traditional,” Peters told the students, explaining that she applied to college as an art student before switching to nursing and then ultimately finding engineering. “I didn’t necessarily know everything that encompassed engineering, but I knew I was good at math, and I knew I liked art and being creative. Engineering married both those topics.”

Arrevalo told the students how he worked in the fields every summer growing up in Arvin and how the experience led him to pursue higher education. He found electrical engineering and “fell in love with the manipulation of electricity.” He now works as an operations engineer and his typical workday is often spent at an aircraft and developing “technology that will in the future protect the United States.”

A student visiting from McFarland High School asked the panelists about the level of math they deal with as engineers. The murmur from other students indicated this was a common concern among the students. The panelists urged students not to let math intimidate them, assured them it was fine if it took them a couple tries to pass tough math classes and praised the CSUB Math Department for resources like tutoring that made the subject easier for them.

“I failed one of my first math classes coming into college,” Arrevalo said. “Probably all of you guys here are smarter than me at math, and somehow, I made it. I persevered, and it’s all because of CSUB. All the resources you get here are fantastic.”

Another student asked about engineering being a male-dominated industry. Peters and Renteria said it was true that they worked with more men than women but that they have still had great experiences in their workplaces.

“There are not a lot of women in my field, and it makes me really sad because I feel like I’m extremely respected by my colleagues,” Peters said. “Nobody treats me any differently just because I’m a girl. I challenge all of you to do engineering because I’d like there to be more women colleagues with me.”

Carlos Romero, Maria Renteria, Omar Samara, Alfredo Arrevalo and Sandra Peters answer questions during an alumni panel.

The keynote speaker for Engineering Day was Becca “Sherpa” Aronoff, a chief flight test engineer with the U.S. Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base. After earning her bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Tennessee, Aronoff went on to earn her master’s in aerospace engineering sciences from the University of Colorado and another master’s degree in flight test engineering from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School.

But before all that, she was like the students gathered in the gymnasium: interested in science but not exactly sure what all engineering entailed. She recalled a “meet the teacher” night she and her mother attended during her senior year of high school. Her calculus teacher told her mother that the teenage Aronoff was good at math and should become an engineer.

“I was too shy and embarrassed to even ask what an engineer was in front of my teacher; I didn’t want to seem like I didn’t know what he was talking about,” she said. “When we got in the car to drive home that night, I asked my mom, ‘Why does my calculus teacher think I should drive trains just because I’m good at math?’ I was already applying to colleges, and I had no idea what an engineer was. After that, I started looking into engineering.”

Aronoff spoke about her work at Edwards testing software and other designs for the pilots who will go on to use them. As a civilian engineer, she tested a helmet that projects symbology onto a pilot’s visor, making sure the movement of those symbols didn’t cause motion sickness. Another project she is especially proud of was testing an automatic ground collision avoidance system, which will take over an aircraft when it detects an imminent crash.

“This is a very cool system to test because it actually saves lives,” she said, noting it had saved 11 pilots so far, including a 22-year-old student pilot who passed out while making a tight turn in the air. “He would have impacted the ground and died if this system I tested had not taken over and flown him away from the ground. He came out to meet my team. It was the most rewarding moment of my career, meeting a young pilot whose life was saved by something I personally worked on.”

Keynote speaker Becca "Sherpa" Aronoff, a chief flight test engineer with the U.S. Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base, speaks about her journey to engineering.

The day concluded with lunch and a career fair, where local industry partners set up tables to meet with students who could be their future employees and coworkers. Tinelle Meriweather, senior talent adviser at Wonderful Citrus, was excited to talk to the students about the work her company does.

“These are great minds; these are our future,” she said of the visiting students, which included some from Wonderful College Prep Academy. “I hope they learn that different industries offer different things, and that there are STEM opportunities in almost every business in this area.”

Ted Pendergrass, coordinator of Taft Oil Technology Academy, brought 23 of his students to CSUB for the event. Students in his program regularly visit colleges and trade schools to highlight different education and career paths. Pendergrass said many of his students go on to Taft College before transferring to CSUB.

“It’s a viable option for them to live at home and be able to go to school here and get a good education,” he said.

Sadie Hernandez, a student in Independence High School’s Energy Academy, is considering CSUB for college. Her mother went there, she said, and Bakersfield is home. She appreciated learning more about the programs and the various paths to engineering.

“It was really informational,” she said about Engineering Day. “It opened my eyes more to the opportunities they have at CSUB and the diversity of engineering fields.”

Representatives from Granite Construction talk to students.

Representatives from Grimmway Farms speak with students.

Representatives from Chevron speak with students.

Representatives from Society of Petroleum Engineers San Joaquin Valley Section speak with students.

Representatives from Halliburton speak with students.

A representative from Qubitekk speaks with students.

A representative from Aera speaks with students.

NSME Career Pathways Advisor Jeff Deguia speaks with students.

Student gather around a table to learn about CSUB's College Assistance Migrant Program.

Representatives from Berry Corporation speak with students.

Representatives from Wonderful Citrus speak with students.

CSUB Chair of Mathematics Dr. Maureen Rush speaks with a student. The math department has many resources to help engineering students through tough math classes.

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Footnotes

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

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