By Mauricio LaPlante
Staff Writer
The footsteps of over 300 San Jose middle schoolers echoed through the halls of the San Jose State Student Union for the 20th annual Science Extravaganza, on Saturday.
Members of Society of Latino Engineers, Society of Mexican American Engineers and Scientists and Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement Schools Program gathered to show youngsters the STEM pathways they could pursue at SJSU.
“It’s important to bring children to events like these,” computer engineering senior Christian Lopez said in Spanish. “If you’re the first generation to enter college like me, and didn’t have the ability to come to an event like this, when you come to college, it could be a big shock.”
The students performed science experiments under the guidance of SJSU students and scientists from around the Bay Area.
“This is the best age that these girls can develop the drive to see what opportunities they have, because many parents didn’t have that opportunity,” Maria Elena Aceves, a mom of one of the students, said in Spanish.
There was a different experiment for the youngsters to do in each room used for the event.
Students flooded into a demonstration by the Santa Clara Valley Water District on depleted salmon populations, while others made stomp rockets or tested balloon propelled mini-cars.
After completing their experiments in the makeshift laboratories, students got the chance to hear from SJSU alumna Pennelope Zamora-Solano who studied in the Charles W. Davidson School of Engineering at SJSU. She currently works on roller coasters at Disneyland, in Anaheim.
“I’m so excited to see many different students coming to this event and having the opportunity to be exposed to STEM,” said Zamora-Solano, the keynote speaker of the event. “They got to learn about my career growing up and different internships and roles that I’ve had and now my career at Disneyland.”
During the lunch break for the extravaganza, Zamora-Solano explained how during her start at SJSU, she was one of the few Latina students in her engineering classes.
“I remember sitting in a very large auditorium, and I remember looking over my right shoulder just looking at the students that were sitting with me.” Zamora-Solano said. “One, I noticed there were not that many women in the room, and there were even less Latina women in the room.”
That divide still stands today, as there are 11 female civil engineering majors for every 47 male engineers, according to the school of engineering’s Fall 2017 statistics.
“At this point, I had two options, either one, I could drop out because I felt alone and isolated, or two, I could use this to fuel me and drive me push me to get good grades,” Zamora-Solano said.
“I chose the second option,” She continued. “I was determined to prove that women, and especially Latina women, could make exceptional engineers in society.”
Zamora-Solano explained, for the students seeing their first glimpse of the SJSU’s science and engineering programs, it was their time to start taking those steps in the future.
“I hope that they feel some motivation and inspiration from my story that they can see themselves in me and say that ‘One day, I can do that too,’ ” she said.
