Photo: Ponderosa students, from left to right, Lucy Chase, Audriana Morehouse and Alyson Giese Maeva after earning first place in MESA Oregon Demo Day 2024 March 5 at Oregon Tech. Teammates Jazlynn Pineda and Azalea Weiser were also part of the winning team but not pictured.
Mathematics, engineering, science and technology is alive and well at Ponderosa Middle School. A mixture of Ponderosa seventh and eighth grade students impressed Mathematics, Engineering, Science and Technology (MESA) Oregon judges during a competition March 5 at Oregon Tech against students across Klamath County.
The competition, named MESA Oregon Demo Day 2024, was a competition many of the Ponderosa students remembered well from a year ago.
Ponderosa science instructor Elizabeth Neuman has been working with students after school to prepare for the event after bringing back MESA to the middle school last year.
For the second consecutive year, Ponderosa took the honor of top middle school. All Ponderosa MESA students placed in this year’s regional competition.
The team of Jazlynn Pineda, Audriana Morehouse, Alyson Giese Maeva, Lucy Chase and Azalea Weiser took first place. The recognitions kept coming as Jacob Culp, Lizzie Childress, Lexie Childress and Lilla Perkins earned second place for Ponderosa.
The MESA spirit award went to seventh graders Oliver Case, Alex Brown, Lily Rumsey, Kaden Flowers and Kingston Clark.
Morehouse, Lizzie Childress, Lexie Childress, Giese Maeva and Pineda were brought back to the same feeling of success after earning first place in the regional competition last year.
Culp was also in a familiar spot after he earned second palace a year ago as well, along with being named chapter student.
The group of Ponderosa students, though they won the regional event, elected to not compete in the state competition. This year will be different, Culp hinted.
“It was down in New Mexico. You have to sign and agree, if you win state, to go to nationals. We did not want to do that because of the distance, and it was our first year in the program,” Culp said. “This year, we are prepared, though. We can even go down there by bus.”
The state competition will be at Portland State University in May, and the national competition will be in San Diego.
MESA Oregon gives teams the task of designing a project each year relating to climate change. Last year, students had to prepare for projects and presentations based on how climate change affects humans, and this year, how it affects animals.
The group of Ponderosa students interviewed clients who worked in Klamath County to help them with their illustration, which would be evaluated by judges.
Ponderosa’s first place team interviewed John Fitzroy, a supervisory park ranger for Fish and Wildlife in Tulelake, Calif. The group’s project was to make a comfortable home for a pacific fisher and protect it from wildfire in its ecosystem.
“It has heat sensors at the bottom to make sure there isn’t a root fire and heat resistant materials to protect the oasis in case of a wildfire,” Pineda said. “A hard part of making it was not knowing where we would get the wood or even how to cut it up. Our next steps will be to learn what it will take so an actual animal can live in the domain.”
The state competition will require teams to include programming in their illustrations.
“For the state competition, we will all be adding more to our projects. Our team who won the spirit award is dealing with robotics. Overall, we are learning about the environment and so much more,” Morehouse said. “We want to see how we will do in the state tournament since we did not get that chance last year.”
