On Saturday, April 30th, the Peoria High School MESA and Peoria Junior MESA teams participated in the 2022 AZ State MESA Day Competition. The event was held at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Students submitted their posters, engineering design journals, and design briefs online several weeks ago for judging by STEM professionals and college students. On Saturday, students tested their designs, presented their finished projects and participated in the online computer Hack Attack.

Peoria High School won the first-place Championship team trophy for the second year in a row. It was the 14th State MESA championship in the team’s 30-year history. Peoria Junior MESA won fourth place among the middle schools. There were 30 schools statewide for the event. Every student on both the junior high and high school teams won a first, second, or third-place medal this year.

Peoria High seniors Aiden Rodriguez and Marina Lemus Pardo will also go on to represent the state of Arizona in the National Engineering Design Competition at the MESA USA Nationals this summer. They will be presenting their mobile app design, “Pocket PT”.

Santa Fe seventh-grade student Santiago Posso and Peoria High School sophomore Leah Bucher were recognized among the AZ MESA Students of the Year. Peoria Co-Advisor Jeff Sears was recognized for his 13 years of service to MESA as one of the state advisors retiring this year.

Peoria High MESA met several times a week after school as a club for students to work on STEM related projects, career exploration and related field trips. Peoria Junior MESA met weekly after school to work on STEM-related projects. This year, the Peoria Junior MESA team members came from feeder schools: Santa Fe, Peoria, and Oasis Elementaries. The MESA Advisors are Peoria High staff Jeffrey Sears and David Hill.