Palomar students receive scholarships to attend national conference

SAN MARCOS – Three students from Palomar College attended a national technology summit in Washington from Oct. 23-25, as part of a National Science Foundation grant program to promote educational opportunity for students interested in technology.

The students who attended from Palomar College are Isaac Hernandez and Diana Perez, both from the college’s drone technology program, and Quin Smith, who is in his last semester in the geographic information systems program here. All three received scholarships from the NSF and American Association of Community Colleges to cover transportation, lodging and conference fees.

“It’s really exciting to have our students share their work and their experience – not only with other students from around the country, but also with the faculty and NSF program officers who will be at the conference,” Wing Cheung, a geography professor at Palomar College who helped launch the drone technology program, said.

It is the second year in a row that students from Palomar College have been invited to attend the Principal Investigators’ Conference of the NSF’s Advanced Technical Education program.

While attending the conference, Hernandez, Perez and Smith had the opportunity to share their work with other students from around the country while learning about the latest in careers and development from the nation’s foremost innovators. The theme of the conference was “Innovation and Impact.”

“This is going to help me learn how to break into the field and see what I want to do because we’ll get to see all kinds of applications (for drone technology) we wouldn’t have even thought about,” Perez said. “I feel very honored, for sure. We want to give back and represent Palomar well.”

“I’m really looking forward to networking with industry professionals and other students with similar career goals,” Smith said.

Cheung said last year’s attendees, Mikayla Garza and Gerardo Perez, have gone on to further success at Palomar College and beyond. Garza now assists in the drone technology program at Palomar College while finishing her associate degree, while Gerardo Perez recently completed an internship with a local company that Cheung said was “very happy” with Perez’s work and has opened more internships to Palomar College students as a result.

Submitted by Palomar College.