COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Having students find an interest in a new career field all starts with a “spark.” Meet Jo’angel Longoria, junior at Bryan ISD’s Career and Technical Education Complex.
“I love manufacturing — just making stuff," Longoria said.
"I’ve always been that type of person, and being in Bryan ISD found that for me.”
Since the fifth grade, Longoria has focused on bringing what he builds to life — in his case, it's a focus on pursuing Landscape Architecture.
“I want to make playgrounds for kids, I want to make national reserves for playgrounds because right now I feel like kids don’t get outside much," Longoria said.
"Playgrounds aren’t really welcoming to them so I feel like I can make more enjoyable playgrounds for people to enjoy in the community.”
Many students like Longoria know where they are driving their future. At Texas A&M, they are helping students get behind the wheel of life to steer their dreams on a more clear path.
Gabe Valdez is the Associate Director of the new initiative — "Spark".
“It's a classroom on wheels — we are going to engage students and get them excited about engineering and teach them some cool things they may not have seen before, to hopefully increase and ignite hopefully that engineering spirit," Valdez said.
The new maker space van, Spark, is helping with educational outreach to get students K-12 interested in engineering.
Shelly Tornquist is the Director of Education Outreach and hopes to reach more students than just the Brazos Valley.
“Our mission is to inspire an engineering mindset — this van is going to be able to do that by going on location to communities that don’t have stem at their school" Tornquist said.
"Sure we will reach our local communities, but we look to travel around the state and deploy different stem activities.”
The inaugural roll out is this Friday from 4 to 7 p.m. at Halloween Town in Downtown Bryan.
More information on the ‘Spark’ PK-12 Education outreach van can be found here.