Dodson MS - 2024 NEDC State Champions!

The theme for the 2023-24 MESA USA National Engineering Design Competition (NEDC) is: Designing for Equity Locally to Affect Sustainability Globally. For this project, student teams were asked to identify an individual or group who experiences some type of inequity (i.e. a user) and employ human-centered design practices to engineer a solution. Each team was tasked to implement a coding component as the main component of their design. Teams were also required to use the United Nations Sustainable

Development Goals (UN-SDGs) in a community-centered capacity for their project due to its broad view of global efforts to promote equity.

The all-female 8th grade team from Dodson MS, at the CSULB MESA center, placed 1st in the NEDC State Finals in the middle school division with their project, FBS Helper. As stated by the team, "The FBS Helper is a device solving vehicular heatstroke through safety addressed in UN SDG 3.2 of Health and Wellbeing and Ending Preventable Child Deaths. Monitoring cars allows busy parents to remember their forgotten child."

Now, Chirsten Gloria, Jhiliane Ibatuan, Isabella Gonzalez, and Noreen Ahmed (Meet the team!) will be moving on to represent California at the NEDC National Competition in June!