EDINBURG - The University of Texas-Pan American sets aside one week every year to celebrate science, math and technology education.
Next week is that week.
The seventh annual Hispanic Engineering, Science and Technology program's weeklong conference begins Sunday night with a reception for its key speakers and ends with Community Day on Sept. 27 featuring musical acts Baby Boy and Grupo Pesado.
The weeklong conference, themed "Launching Tomorrow's Innovators" will include a roundtable discussion about how to encourage Hispanic students to pursue science and technology-related careers. That discussion will be led by U.S. Rep Rubén Hinojosa, who spearheaded the program seven years ago.
HESTEC also includes workshops for students and teachers, a robotics competition and a career day for college seniors looking to get a head start on job hunting.
Last year, about 5,000 students attended the workshops and activities throughout the week. This year the university expects more students, S.J. Sethi, acting executive director of HESTEC wrote in an e-mail.
"The goal of this event is to expose students to these wonderful career opportunities and we hope that HESTEC will encourage them to pursue higher education and eventually become astronauts, scientists, doctors and researchers to fill the shortage of professionals our nation is currently facing," Sethi wrote.
Now that the university has succeeded in luring people on campus during the weeklong event, it is focusing this year's conference on educational activities rather than entertainment, Sethi said.
Highlights include the A T. rex Named Sue exhibit on display at the visitors center as well as the NASA Mars Science Laboratory Rover, which is making its Texas debut at UTPA.
The rover is expected to launch from Florida in fall 2009 and arrive on Mars in 2010. NASA has been participating in HESTEC since the beginning and decided to display its newest rover during the event because it is impressed with the program, Sethi wrote.
Visitors can also see the U.S. Navy F-18 20-seat simulator, which shows a pilot's perspective of an aircraft carrier takeoff and landing, as well as the university's renovated planetarium that now features a digital projector system during the event.
For more information, visit HESTEC's Web site at www.hestec.org.
