ENCORE Scholars attend College Readiness Conference
By Oscar Garza

EDINBURG, TX - A sea of eager students wearing yellow ENCORE Scholar shirts engulfed the UTPA campus on May 7 and 8, 2010 for the inaugural ENCORE Annual Conference. The students carried a red bag on their backs, with an excited graduate raising his arms, seemingly symbolizing the future success that follows them. The energetic students briskly went to their respected breakout sessions where they were welcomed by corporate representatives with multitudes of inspirational backgrounds.

When asked what the ENCORE Conference was about, Charlie Giang, a Edinburg CISD 8th grader, stated, “The ENCORE Conference is where you meet lots of speakers, and they talk about their journey through their life, and that was pretty fun because we learned how they faced difficulties but they still made it as successful people.” One Valley Hispanic role model at the conference was Miguel Alanis, UTPA alum, with his presentation, “From the migrant fields to Texas Instruments engineer.”Alanis hails from Texas Instruments in Houston, Texas; he shared a little about his past, his family and his education leading him to success. On his work experiences in the fields he said, “It is suffering work, you suffer a great deal. I had a lot of time to think during those times about how I did not want to be in that situation all my life.” Parents present, most of them Hispanic, nodded vehemently with agreement on his remarks of struggle and achievement. On the issue of ENCORE, Alanis stated, “I think that the ENCORE program is a great program that is growing and it should be encouraged to participate and work with the universities as well. We hope that the universities can support them because it is their channel, their passage, to get more students in here and to get more professionals from the Valley.” Many students found Alanis’s presentation relevant to their lives, “My experience at the ENCORE Conference was exciting, like learning about how people from Mexico came and made their lives to the top. That was nice, my parents come from Mexico too, so I can figure out their [the presenters] experiences, so I enjoyed it a lot,” stated 8th grader, Jesus Sepulveda.

In another session, State Farm Insurance Representative Robert Elizalde, a graduate from Edcouch-Elsa High School and UTPA Alum, gave his presentation, “The value of a college education in the finance and insurance fields.” Elizalde spoke about mistakes he made in his youth, primarily, having too many jobs and not focusing on his education first. When Elizalde said, “The one thing that I offer to you, I’m going to give every single one of you one of my cards. And if any of you guys ever run into a snag, ever run into the ‘where do I go from here,’ you can call me, shoot me an email. That would be a wonderful use of my time,” the students were left in awe.

Rosy Rodriguez, a Latina Role Model working in the Satellite Division at Boeing Company, stated why it was important for students to be exposed to college-readiness at such a young age, “It is prime time to plant that seed in their head. College is the forefront of their future, now that they are at such a young impressionable age, its time to plant that seed and start the dialogue that they need to prepare for school, take advanced classes and have extra-curricular activities that will help them…it opens up that thought process for them.” Rodriguez hails from Los Angeles, California, and came to UTPA to share her experiences about the dynamics of the satellite business. Her presentation afforded the students to be aware that Boeing has multiple departments that don’t exclusively deal with engineering.

Haldo Treviño, an Edinburg CISD 8th grader, shared some words with us, “At the ENCORE Conference I learned about engineering jobs out there, you can work with Boeing, and its different sides like the satellites, or the actual machines. And the representative from Texas Instruments was teaching us how she [Perla Limas] went through high school but she didn’t know what her career was going to be, but when she graduated from UTPA with accounting, she showed us that you don’t actually have to be an engineer to work for an engineering company.” He continued about his eye-opening experiences, “The conference changed my perspective that I didn’t know that many people graduated through UTPA, I thought you had to go to…Harvard, or Princeton to be able to get those higher-end jobs. But the conference showed that those representatives they came and graduated through here, at UTPA, and they got those higher paying jobs.”

When Charles Galindo, from NASA, asked about if the Earth had any similar craters like the moon, several students knew the answer, “in Arizona,” and, “in Mexico,” they proudly said, and their responses left Galindo impressed. The students continued to be tuned into what Galindo’s experiences were and how he made it to NASA; even a few teachers were jumping in with questions of their own for the NASA Geologist. Galindo also spoke about the importance of being involved in extra-curricular activities and how those things will really make you stand out. He left them with these words of advice, “Don’t be afraid of taking the hard road, if you want to succeed further in life, do the hard things. Don’t always find the easy way out. Stick to it, work hard and eventually it will pay off, don’t give up, don’t let people tell you that you cannot do it. Do the best you can.”

One of the parents of an ENCORE scholar, Senaida Muñoz, was extremely enthused about the conference, “This is going to be an opportunity for my daughter to go on into college. She has been very enthusiastic about going and she likes it and she really enjoys it and she says she learns a lot. She is learning how to work with her peers and the teachers are also showing her how to work independently. I see a transformation. I would tell other mothers to enlist their children in the ENCORE program…this can benefit them, to succeed in college and they like to get involved and they like working with other students. It really helps them for their future success.”

Marie Flores, an 8th grade teacher stated, “I think ENCORE is helping students because its sparking interest at an early age, and its letting them decide what they want to study, especially before they go to high school and into college”. Brothers Jeremy and Jason Garza, from 7th and 8th grade, respectively, had some moving words to share with the world, “The ENCORE conference was super cool because we got to learn about robotics and like what kinds of jobs there is for that,” Oswaldo Gomez, from 7th grade said, “The ENCORE conference is awesome, it taught me many things and I would like to come back to more sessions.” When asked if ENCORE inspires a college-going culture, Jim Garcia from 8th Grade stated, “Actually, now I want to go to UT and study robotics.”

Many more of these life-changing moments happened at the ENCORE Conference, and it was all concluded with the robotics competition. The students were given some time to build their Bot-Brain robots in teams and then compete against each other in a maze for the grand prize, an iPad. The victors? None other than the brilliant students at Barrientes Middle School from the Edinburg CISD with their snappy winning remarks, “You messed with the best, you lose like the rest!” The three students that won, 7th grader Juan Peña, 8th grader Elyssa Alaniz, and 7th grader Sharon Luna, shared their experiences with us. A very tall and modest Peña started, “It was fun, competitive, and challenging and it made me real nervous seeing others make and test their robots.” A soft spoken Olena said, “I kinda thought I wasn’t going to win because there were a lot of people, imagine you winning in the middle of a lot of schools, kinda impossible to believe it. It was kinda hard, but at the end I was happy because we won.” Finally, Alaniz kept it short and sweet, “We competed against 48 teams and won an iPad, it was awesome!”

The first ever ENCORE Annual Conference was a complete success and exceeded all expectations. The ENCORE team and the college student volunteers from Kappa Sigma, Society of Hispanic Engineers, and The Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers worked extremely hard to accomplish this goal and enjoyed the overall experience. Next year, the ENCORE Conference will be even bigger and better!

For more information about the ENCORE Program, please contact Ernesto Villarreal via email at evillarreal@tvcof.org.