CESASC was established 51 years ago, with the objective of providing an excellent environment to promote education and international advancement programs for its members, particularly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).

Starting 2012, the CESASC Board constituted a STEM Committee comprising of experienced people with excellent engineering and science background, with Dr. Yutao He, Dr. Eastwood Im, Mr. Yiu Man So, and Dr. Dankai Liu (Chair) as core team members, to promote the STEM teaching and learning in Southern California, including LA, Orange and San Bernardino Counties, by organizing speeches and essay competitions to get the involvement of the school students.

Starting last fall, the core team met with school districts in the Southern California districts many times to determine the CESASC strength and appropriate approaches for the STEM program and received very constructive responses in the meetings that elicited ideas for the best working program that can benefit students. This feedback, particularly from the meeting conducted by Mr. Kevin Baker from San Bernandino School District, helped the core team in developing the most effective strategy. Everybody agreed that, to begin with, it would be best to organize a tour guide in the open house of the affiliate organization. Gradually, a CESASC STEM Speaker Bureau was formed as an outcome of the talks and meetings, to help students get maximum benefit from the expert members’ knowledge.

In addition, the Board has authorized the core team to organize an essay contest inviting all the 8th-12th grade students. Its objectives are to strengthen and motivate the young generation to be involved with and evolve future technology. This year’s topic of the essay competition was “Future Technology That Can Improve Human Life”. It turns out responses are very encouraging with about 30 entries. Two of them were from Ohio and Connecticut, respectively.

It turned out it brought forth exceptional talent as demonstrated through the wide array of topics chosen by the participants, which made deciding the winners a challenging task. The evaluation committee for the essay competition this year included: Dr. Dankai Liu, STEM committee chair, Yiu Man So, STEM essay competition lead, Angela She (佘安君), Haodong Chen (陈昊东), Jun Deng (邓君), Lingyan Ruan (阮凌雁), Yan Qu (曲燕), and Yi Yang (杨熠).

With the success of this inaugural competition, CESASC decides to hold the contest as an annual event with the continued support and active participation of our community to ensure an exciting and meaningful project for our next generation.

CESASC looks forward to accomplish even more milestones in its journey with the sustained support from our community.