Success at TSA Bakersfield competition helps STEM students land spot at Nationals
Technology Student Association (TSA) is an organization for students interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). For the first time, Peninsula students took part in TSA Bakersfield, the annual competition held in Bakersfield, CA. Participants were able to win awards in a variety of categories such as “Debating Technological Issues” and “Manufacturing Prototype.”
“For several years, Peninsula has participated in the TSA Teams competition and every year we have moved on to Nationals, where we discover new events to participate in,” club supervisor and chemistry teacher Charles “Chas” Lee said. “We found out about TSA Bakersfield and decided
to give it a try.”
Club President Alisa Hathaway and her sister Erika Hathaway are two of the many students who participated in TSA Bakersfield and won an award. They are now proceeding to Nationals along with other national qualifiers such as freshman Alec Britt, sophomores Anna Chang, Leslie Castro, Alice Lee, Saehui Hwang and juniors Nile Minn, Janice Lee and Pete Makrygiannis.
“Since this was our first year participating in TSA Bakersfield, none of us knew what to expect,” Alisa said. “We were hoping that at least one team would have the opportunity to go to Nationals and continue on in the competition and we were pleasantly surprised when more than ten of us proceeded to Nationals.”
Preparing for the day of the competition required students to put in a lot of time and effort in order to excel in their categories. Alice and Castro spent months working on their projects for the manufacturing prototype category.
“Leslie and I started preparing for the competition way back in October,” Alice said. “We worked really hard on our project which was to make a bag for a wheelchair that would be capable of being manufactured in a real life factory.”
Alice and Castro needed to plan constantly in order to finish their project on time and had to meet weekly in order to meet each milestone.
“We had to decide which specific materials we wanted to use for our project while also being conscious about the prices of those materials since we needed everything to fit into our budget,” Castro said. “The project also required a flow chart, accurate drawings and measurements of the product we built which took a while to complete.”
The Hathaways entered in the “Debating Technological Issues” category and their preparation steps were different but equally as time-consuming.
“We were assigned three topics based on technology and STEM about three months before the competition and from there we had to do a ton of research,” Alisa said. “We needed to conduct in-depth research so that we would have a deeper understanding of the topics in order to do well when
debating during the competition.”
Chang also took months to prepare for her competition in the category “Photographic Technology.”
“My event competition consisted of 15 photos centered around the theme
‘Macro Photography’ which is when you take close-up pictures of objects and it
allows you to view objects in a different way,” Chang said. “I really liked the
theme and the photos I took were of a ukulele, flowers, fire, someone’s face and
other objects that interested me.”
During the competition, each competitor presented or turned in his or her work to be judged and scored.
“At the competition, I turned in my portfolio of the 15 edited and 15 original photos I took, along with each photo’s corresponding description, caption and explanation of its relation to the theme,” Chang said.
After the competition, the participants attended the awards ceremony to see who won in each category.
The Hathaways won first place in their category, “Debating Technological Issues,” while Castro and Lee placed second in the “Manufacturing Prototype” category.
“Winning was incredibly satisfying because Alice and I worked really hard to make our project the best it could be,” said Castro. “It felt amazing to know that our hard work did not go by unnoticed and that we were able to come in second place and earn recognition for ourselves and our school.”
The qualifying teams will continue to prepare for the National competition in Nashville, TN from June 28 to July 2, where they hope to find success.
“I’m really excited for Nationals because we get to interact with other schools from around the country,” Alice said. “I’m most excited to see other people’s creations and I’m also looking forward to the new insight I will receive to improve my project next year.”
