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 * [[image:mesa_logo_2.gif width="1042" height="85"]]

What is it? ** MESA (Math Engineering Science Achievement) is an organization dedicated to supporting women and minority students in science and mathematics, to prepare them for technical careers. MESA has in-school clubs, programs outside of school, and extensive summer programs to “help underrepresented students visualize themselves in college and careers related to mathematics, engineering, and science. Through hands-on math and science activities and field trips, students apply their learning to real-world situations.” MESA can provide role models for students who otherwise might not imagine themselves in interesting careers in science and engineering.

This is the [|Seattle MESA] site. This is the Washington MESA site.

**How could I use it in my classroom?** Hopefully the school where I teach will already have a MESA club. (Just about all the high schools in the Seattle School District do, except Ballard HS.) If it does not, the science and math teachers might be able to start one. And I would like to have a range of information on summer programs such as MESA’s for my math and science students, including an Summer Math Scholars, an intensive math class that teaches a year of Math in 15 days. One of the things I want to be sure to communicate to my students, is that if they take four years of science and math, they will have more career options than if they stop taking math and science classes early in high school.

For their future career choices and economic access! Even careers that might not seem technical generally require a college degree, and just to be considered for admission to the University of Washington, students have to have three years of math and two years of lab science in high school. So just in the basic college admissions process, they serve as a gateway. Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project makes this point eloquently. Here's how Robert Moses, the author, explains it, "You may not go to college but if you don't go it should not be because yo haven't prepared yourself to go. Society is already prepared to write you off the way sharecroppers up in the Delta have been written off. They say you don't want to learn ... I talked to them about the computer, and what it means - the issue it raises about literacy and being able to gain access to jobs."
 * Why does it matter that girls and minority students achieve competence and confidence in math and science?

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