The time is right to outreach to the middle schools, high schools and community colleges to motivate students to attend the California State University, Sacramento. This proposal is intended to reach out to students at Modesto Junior College and two high schools that serve girls and Hispanic students. This year, CSUS has begun a partnership with Modesto Junior College with the objective to join talents and develop a systems engineering team to design and build a Lunar Excavator. This machine is part of a national competition sponsored by NASA ESMD directorate and is known as LUNABOTICS competition. What is proposed herein is to support students enrolled in the junior college and the two high schools with the objective to feed the pipeline of women and minority students to CSUS. The proposal offers that opportunity by supporting a robotics club at one of the high schools and as well as scholarships to women and minority students to continue their studies at CSUS. Integrating the Modesto Junior College students into the CSUS Lunabotics team and supporting them has the same objective to motivate them to continue their studies in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science.
OBJECTIVES
This proposal is intended to fulfill several of the STEM Pipeline Outreach Program objectives.
It will:
• Address the critical need to train skilled engineers and computer scientists with an orientation towards aerospace related careers.
• Support for the LUNABOTICS project will promote interdisciplinary team work between the Modesto and CSUS teams in Mechanical, Electrical, Civil engineering and Computer Science students.
• Promote a solid partnership between CSUS and a minority serving institution like Modesto Junior College. The ECS Dean has expressed his intention to create an open door policy to the Modesto students- to welcome them and admit them into ECS specialties.
• Impacted directly is the participation of women and minority students by allowing CSUS to offer scholarships specifically directed toward students to study careers in ECS.