business backgrounder | education & workforce
Below: James Dorsey, the longtime director
of the Washington MESA program.
Right: Mariah Morey of Olympic College,
center, and other Washington MESA
students talk to Gov. Jay Inslee.
The programs include academic excellence seminars, field
trips, study centers and more.
They also work with companies such as Boeing and Battelle
to provide firsthand experiences to give students a feel for
what the end result of their work will look like — so they can
envision themselves in the job and have motivation to persist,
Yoshiwara said.
“That’s part of the MESA program — to envision themselves
in those jobs,” Yoshiwara said.
practical help
Mariah Morey, in her second year studying chemical
and biological engineering at Olympic College in Bremerton,
encountered MESA when she needed help with books. She
found a program to borrow and exchange textbooks, but that
was only the beginning. The mentorship and one-on-one
counseling through MESA was a big help, she said.
“If I wanted to talk, like
about my grades, they were
there,” Morey said.
Pacific Northwest
MESA also helped her set
National Laboratory:
up a software development
www.pnnl.gov
and quality assurance internship at PNNL last year.
State Board for Community
She will transfer to the Uni& Technical Colleges:
sbctc.edu
versity of Washington to study
sensory and neural bioengiWashington MESA:
neering. She wants to work in
washingtonmesa.org
research on how to help the
disabled and paralyzed.
42 association of washington business
yes, this is rocket science
Ginger McCormick, studying biochemistry at Columbia Basin
College (CBC), said she was doing fine without MESA —
but connecting with the program changed the course of her
college career.
A high school dropout, McCormick earned her GED and
applied to CBC with the idea of studying criminal justice and
working for the Washington State Patrol. She wanted to go
into law enforcement, and discovered through the MESA
advisors that she could do so and pursue her love of science at
the same time by going into criminal forensics.
McCormick is pursuing an internship at the state’s crime
lab in Kennewick and has been accepted to Portland State
University in Oregon.