Jose J. Granda, Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
California State University, Sacramento
Email: grandajj@gaia.ecs.csus.edu
Phone: (916) 278-5711
California State University, Sacramento promotes mentored projects with faculty guidance and student participation at the undergraduate and graduate level. These projects have a positive impact on students and faculty. The mentored engineering projects are a tool to motivate, keep and retain students by keeping them engaged in space-related projects of practical importance. The objective of this proposal is to perform engineering projects, which will assist students in becoming the workforce of the future for NASA and their contractors in the Aerospace Industry. In particular, it is of interest to investigate the factors that contribute to the low numbers of Hispanic students in aerospace academic programs and in the aerospace industry. The current projects are in two areas, the aerospace related senior projects and graduate students thesis. We want to continue to collect data and research an answer to improve the number of minority students in engineering and computer science. This year we also would like to support the LUNABOTICS project for which CSUS has been invited to participate in partnership with Modesto Junior College.