The UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering is meeting employer needs in STEM

At the U.S. News STEM Solutions 2017 conference, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering Dean Albert P. Pisano participated in the closing keynote session. Pisano shared the stage with Rep. Scott Peters; Debra Reed, Chairman, President and CEO of Sempra Energy; Francis deSouza, President and CEO of Illumina; and Mark Dankberg, Chairman of the Board and CEO of ViaSat.

The high-powered group discussed the importance of meeting the STEM challenges in San Diego and beyond, as well as the key roles that community colleges play in filling the STEM pipeline.

“I spend a lot of time listening to corporate executives to learn from them exactly what their workforce needs are, so that we at the Jacobs School can be preparing students to the best of our ability,” said Pisano.

Increasing and supporting STEM-related degree programs at institutions of higher education is crucial, but it’s the not whole picture, Pisano noted. If students don't know what types of STEM jobs are available to them, how will they know to choose a STEM field of study?

Pisano highlighted the need to introduce to students at a young age the various types of STEM careers that are available to them.

The Jacobs School of Engineering helps in this important task through a variety of outreach programs, some of which are run by the Jacobs School’s IDEA Engineering Student Center. In addition, the Jacobs School administers UC San Diego’s instantiation of the California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science, or COSMOS.

COSMOS is a four-week residential program for high school students with demonstrated achievements in math and science that gives this kind of introduction to a career in engineering. COSMOS is offered at four University of California campuses and aims to encourage high school students interested in science, technology, engineering and math to continue pursuing these fields in college.

At UC San Diego, COSMOS has been in place for 12 years. Students who are admitted to the program select from nine clusters depending on their interests, which range from computers in everyday life and the amazing red blood cell, to tissue engineering and robot inventors.

Read about COSMOS 2016 here.

Learn how to apply to COSMOS here.

#ILookLikeAnEngineer: Delta Caraulia

Familiar with the #ILookLikeAnEngineer hashtag on Twitter? It started trending back in August 2015 - a San Francisco software engineer inspired a viral online campaign when she faced backlash after appearing in an ad as part of her company's recruiting campaign. Her response was a photo holding a sign with the hashtag #ILookLikeAnEngineer — it inspired female engineers around the world to share their photos/stories on social media using the hashtag.  We think this is great, and wanted to jump onboard.

Meet Delta, a sophomore mechanical engineer at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

Name: Delta Caraulia

Major: Mechanical Engineering

Estimated graduation date: June 2018

Why did you choose engineering at UC San Diego?

I always liked math growing up. Then I thought, what should I do with it? I should do engineering. After I went to COSMOS at UC San Diego, a four-week residential summer program for high school students interested in pursuing a career in a STEM field, I was set on engineering. COSMOS – I was part of Cluster 4, the earthquakes in action cluster. We had to perform a timber retrofit. So when you retrofit something, you make it better. Maybe back then, they did not have enough support. We were accounting for natural disasters.

Also, during my senior year of high school, I took AP Physics and really liked classical mechanics. I noticed myself liking the building more so than the other parts of physics.

Do you have a favorite quote or mantra?

This might be a little embarrassing. In Mean Girls, it’s the part when they’re talking about calculus and Damien is disgusted and asks Cady why. She says, “Because it’s the same in every country.” That was beautiful to me.

What are your career goals?

I honestly don’t know. I’m really trying to figure it out. I really liked 3D printing, which was implemented when I took a pilot course in the Dean’s new Experience Engineering initiative this past spring. I like that 3D printing is cheap, especially for kids. They need an inexpensive way to keep producing as they keep growing.

What are you involved in on campus?

I participated in UC San Diego’s Summer Bridge program in 2014 before school started. Summer Bridge tries to bridge incoming freshmen and help them integrate better into their first year. You take two different classes: Contemporary Issues and Educational Studies. I thought I wouldn’t get into it as much as I did. The Contemporary Issues component was eye-opening for me. I was always very math and science-y, but the program opened my eyes to real world issues.

I prepped to become a tutor, and this quarter I signed up for Global TIES. I like the humanitarian aspect of Global TIES. Growing up, I knew I wanted to do something where I could help people. I tried to do medical stuff, but I learned nope, I can’t touch people, I can’t see blood. That’s exactly what Global TIES is, engineering for humanity. And the leaders of the class are actual professors, so you have their guidance and meet often.

In addition,I’ll be a part of KPCore, which does outreach to my high school.

What are three things you find unique about you?

1. I do like keeping busy. I don’t really have any hobbies, which I guess is why I like extracurricular activities. Also, in terms of last year, I worked a lot. I took on a lot of hours at the library. It’s really nice working there. The people there are really nice and easy to talk to.
2. I worry a lot, but I also know that I can do it…I also complain a lot, but I’ll do it. Haha.
3. I went to Europe last year and I want to go to Spain next year.

What does this campaign mean to you?

This issue does hit hard because I will be an engineer in the field. There's a misconception that women get hired to fill some quota so I don't want anyone to think I had something handed to me. I will earn it based on my merit.

I spoke with the VP of Qualcomm, and he said that he was originally an engineer himself. It was cool that he had both the understanding of his company’s engineering work, in addition to his own administrative work. Maybe in the future, I can hold a position that combines multiple fields.

Stay tuned for more, and don't forget to follow the Jacobs School on social media to keep up with the hashtag!

Computer science alumna wins San Diego County Teacher of the Year award

Photo: San Diego Unified

Huge congratulations to computer science alumna Shirley Parrish Miranda, who won a San Diego County Teacher of the Year award this year. Miranda teaches math and computer science at Morse High School. She is also a fellow with COSMOS, a residential science program for high school students run by the Jacobs School.

Here is the San Diego Union-Tribune on Miranda:

To establish trust in her classroom, Miranda greets students at the door every day, and then thanks them as they exit.

“It is a small gesture that is often overlooked, but is an important component in building relationships and respect with my students, both important aspects of education,” she wrote.

The tradition was inspired by a student who told her she was the only teacher to speak to him the entire year.

“It simultaneously broke my heart and made me happy,” she wrote. “Respect and relationships help close the achievement gap with at-risk students.”

A former software engineer, Miranda works to steer students to pursue an education in science, technology, engineering and math. Her STEM career was inspired by a teacher who encouraged her to enter the science fair.

Miranda assess her students daily, and groups them together for mentoring. She forged a partnership with UC San Diego, which allows her to bring in professors, professionals and students with work in her class.

When teaching computer science, Miranda weaves in relevant issues into the curriculum — including cyberbullying.

Full story here: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/oct/10/cox-teachers-of-year-2015/

You can also watch Miranda on KUSI News:  http://www.kusi.com/clip/11913386/winners-of-the-san-diego-county-teacher-award

COSMOS celebrates 10th anniversary

It's a good way to celebrate your 10th anniversary: for the first time this year, there are more girls than boys at COSMOS, a four-week residential STEM outreach program here at UC San Diego. This summer, girls made up 52 percent of students in the program for the first time in history.

Students have the choice between nine different tracks, or clusters, to study, including making their own biodiesel from renewable resources; tissue engineering and regenerative medicine; and new this year, music and technology, where they're learning to manipulate sound electronically and make their own instruments.

We dropped by the biofuels cluster Tuesday, July 8, with a local TV crew. Students were learning all about washing their biofuel to discard impurities. A few pictures of the fun below. That cluster is led by chemistry teaching professor Skip Pomeroy, with the help of Renee Williams, a UC Presidential postdoctoral fellow.

Each cluster also works with high school teachers, who get to bring the curriculum back to their campuses. Julie Baker-Conte, a high school biology teacher at San Pasqual High in Escondido, is working with Pomeroy this year.

"The students get some really good hands-on lab experience with equipment that's not available at the high school level," she said.

Structural Engineers for a Month

It's not every day that high school students get to build a structure and get it tested on an earthquake simulation table. But that's exactly what 23 students from all over California were doing Tuesday, July 30, on the fourth floor of the Structural and Materials Engineering building at the Jacobs School.
They were taking part in COSMOS, an outreach program partially funded by the University of California to encourage students to study science, technology, engineering and math in college.
In the program's earthquake engineering track, students learned cutting-edge techniques to retrofit the structures they built and how to make them damage-proof during an earthquake using sophisticated methods like shear walls, isolator for the structures' base and more.
"I feel like I've been learning a lot about structural engineering," said Kevin Yturralde, 17, a senior at Morse High School in the Paradise Hills neighborhood of San Diego. "The content we learn is important. But it's also a great look into what college life would be."
Some pictures of the fun below:

High School Students Put on One of a Kind Robotic Art Show

Robots can make art--if programmed properly. That's one of the lessons about 20 students from all over California learned this summer at the Jacobs School. They also learned to program in Python.

The students were taking part in COSMOS, an outreach program partially funded by the University of California to encourage students to study science, technology, engineering, and math in college. More specifically, the high school students were enrolled in the program's Computers in Everyday Life track, where they learned how to program robots, create an app for Android phones and worked with Arduinos, devices that control circuits and motors.

At the end of their robotics sequence, the students put on an art show with their robots. They had programmed the robots, which were equipped with a marker, to draw images, including a flower, a popular cartoon character and a cityscape. Some pictures of the fun below.

Students worked with Ryan Kastner, professor of computer science at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, Curt Schurgers, a researcher at the Qualcomm Institute at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, Saura Naderi, an Arduino guru and outreach coordinator at Calit2, and Shirley Miranda, a high school teacher at Morse High School, director of the Greater San Diego Science and Engineering Fair, and COSMOS teacher fellow.