SAN BENITO — Lily Marroquin looks forward to learning about the aerospace sciences.
“I think the school is offering a lot of really good opportunities for us,” said Lily, 16, a junior at San Benito High School.
She and about 20 other Greyhound juniors gathered Tuesday morning in the school library for the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Texas A&M Experiment Station and the San Benito school district.
The MOU allows the San Benito school district to offer NASA’S High School Aerospace Scholars program to the school’s juniors.
“It’s exciting to learn about these things and kind of get one foot in the door already,” Lily said. “I’m trying to see if I would be interested in it.”
“This is the first time that we are going to have this partnership with Texas A&M and NASA representatives,” said Alex Salinas, higher education coordinator for the district.
“This program, Aerospace scholars, allows students to do online modules throughout the year,” Salinas said. “Through this program they will be able to learn different science, technology, engineering and mathematics-related fields of study.”
Dyson Castillo, 17, took the program last year and found it worth his while.
“I liked a lot of the projects that they did,” said the Greyhound senior. “The problems that they had helped me learn what that part of science is about.”
He found the math especially “challenging.”
“The formulas are very long,” he said. “I had to study a lot. It really got me to like math even more.”
The program is a huge opportunity for high school students said Shelley Tornquist, director of Spark! PK-12 Engineering Education Outreach for Texas A&M.
“The High School Aerospace Scholars program has been around for about 22 years,” she said. “It has been an online course for Texas juniors and they go through four modules in about four months. If they do well in those they get invited to the Johnson Space Center in the summer for an engagement.”
Principal Gilbert Galvan hailed the agreement as a big plus for the school’s juniors.
“I think it’s awesome,” Galvan said. “It’s great because I promote, every Wednesday I talk to them about colleges, and my theme is college, college, college. We want our kids prepared and we can do it, so we can grow in the Rio Grande Valley.”
