By Karla Perez
From our March-April Issue
Miami Lakes Educational Center (MLEC) is known for its particularly strong academic achievements, but its strengths when it comes to extracurriculars often go overlooked. Our school has several clubs, all of which focus on a variety of interests, including STEM.
One of our STEM-centered clubs recently earned some recognition at the Florida Technology Student Association State Conference Competition: Technology Student Association (TSA). Two members came back with two trophies in hand: William Asencio brought the second-place trophy; and Franko Sanabria, the third-place trophy — both are juniors.
Seven other members also won several finalist pins in a board game competition, Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM), structural design and such.
The conference took place on February 29th at the Double Tree Hilton Hotel in Orlando and 10 out of the 26 members of TSA attended. The competition consisted of 38 different events which fluctuated from children’s stories to fashion design to essays on technology and more, and MLEC TSA prepared all year for any challenge that could be thrown at them.
The trophies came from the event on Computer-Aided Design (CAD) in the section of Engineering.
“Computer-aided design refers to computers being used to assist engineers and drafters to create 3D models. CAD software allows you to measure height, width, and length of anything and can help engineers design anything from a violin to the system of a car,” explained Franko Sanabria, our school’s TSA chapter President.
For some, this was their first TSA Conference in Orlando.
“As a freshman, it was a pretty fun experience to see how schools across the state compete in such a large event. I got lots of experience and it gave me lots of aspirations to come back next year with an even better performance,” said Sergio Paez.
Out of the 53,000 members of TSA Florida, around two to four thousand attended the state conference and MLEC ended up victorious regardless of the myriad schools that attended.
“Everyone in the competition was in the same room and based on what I saw there, I thought I had won first place. I was a bit disappointed at first but now I’m proud regardless of what place I got,” said William Asencio, who won the second-place trophy.
Those ten TSA members weren’t the only MLEC representatives who attended, though. We had an alumnus attend as a volunteer at the event: Herman Gonzalez.
Events like these go as far as to show MLEC’s excellence and quality, demonstrating that our students’ passions for different subjects are reinforced with our outstanding extracurriculars — and these sometimes stick with them even after leaving MLEC.
