«return to news list2021 Towering Above Competition Winners Announced

12/21/2021 – 

To View the Slideshow of 2021 Towering Above Winners, Click HERE

December 16, 2021 – NM MESA and Sandia National Laboratories partnered to host the Towering Above Competition to challenge students in middle and high school to create a paper tower using only construction paper, scissors, and scotch tape.  Students from around New Mexico submitted towers in the categories of Tallest Tower, School Spirit, Most Creative and Best Technical Design. 

The competition is the 2^nd Annual Event and judges from Sandia reviewed student entries and interviewed the finalists virtually.   Winners were announced on December 16 and will receive awards for their performance. 

“Our students continue to excel and have shown that creativity in design can be done with the simplest of materials and some innovation” said Anita Gonzales, NM MESA’s Deputy Director.

Students appreciated the opportunity to participate.  Ashlyn Chavez from Belen High School received an award and said that “I learned about Engineering and weight distribution. I liked how I was encouraged to be creative and use ‘outside of the box’ ideas to create my tower”.

Competition Winners:

NM MESA’s mission is to “Empower and motivate New Mexico’s culturally diverse students with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) enrichment.” 

NM MESA is a year-round, multi-year, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) initiative that works with school districts and higher education institutions to improve NM student STEM performance; increase NM college STEM performance; increase NM college STEM enrollment; provide hands-on STEM competitions.