HCPSS Students Make 2018 Regional MESA Day Competition a Success

April 27th, 2018

Howard County Public School System (HCPSS) students excelled in the Maryland Mathematics Engineering and Science Achievement (MESA) program’s regional MESA Day competitions on April 19 at The Meeting House in Columbia.

The competitions included nine events in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), with 350 HCPSS students representing four elementary, five middle and two high schools. St. Johns Lane Elementary School was the overall elementary school winner. Patapsco Middle School was the overall winner at the middle school level, and Reservoir High School won at the high school level.

Students competed in cyber security and interactive game design challenges, and built bridges out of basswood and balsa wood under strict guidelines that tested structural integrity. The contestants’ creative and innovative abilities were evaluated in events that included a storybook theme park ride, hovercraft construction and racing, and effective communications. High school teams built and programmed Cyber Robots and other robots designed to square off in a battleball robot challenge arena.

Middle and high schools competed in the MESA National Engineering Design Challenge. Patapsco Middle School won the competition at the middle school level, and earned the opportunity to represent Maryland at the national event in Philadelphia in June.

The winners will represent Howard County at the Maryland Statewide MESA competition on Saturday, May 5 at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) in Laurel. The public is invited to attend. More information about the MESA program is available at the JHU-APL MESA website.