81 students from CECyTE Pesquería, Mexico, participated in the Gen Técnico Makers boot camp, a Ternium initiative to raise awareness among young people about their community's environmental issues, motivating them to generate innovative solutions.
As part of the Gen Técnico Roberto Rocca Educational Program, students participated for three days in the third edition of the bootcamp, where in addition to learning about the environmental challenges present in their community, they obtained tools and support from professionals to raise issues and develop technical projects to solve them.
For the first time, the event was held at the Research and Technological Innovation Park (PIIT) of Tecnológico de Monterrey, where participants had the opportunity to visit the Mathematics, Biotechnology, Nanotechnology and Artificial Intelligence research centers, as well as the Additive Manufacturing Center.
“I will cherish what I have learned for the rest of my professional life, so I am very grateful. What I have liked most is how they teach: here they do it entertainingly and manage to make things stick with you. I have also learned to think differently,” said Joselyn Gonzalez, who is in her fourth semester as a Mechatronics technician.
About the program
Gen Técnico Roberto Rocca was created to improve the technical skills and comprehensive training of students from public technical high schools. Since 2019 it has been implemented at the campus of the Centro de Estudios Científicos y Tecnológicos de Nuevo León (CECyTENL) located in the municipality of Pesquería.
It consists of six lines of action or paths, each with different semester activities throughout the three years of study: Practices and Projects, to which Gen Técnico Makers belongs; Gender Diversity, which offers workshops focused on female school permanence; Life and Career, through which they strengthen their soft skills for employability; as well as Industrial Safety, Educational Mathematics, and Technical Competencies.
What did the projects consist of?
The students worked on projects that addressed different problems: for example, Juan Carlos Tovar focused on water care, specifically on avoiding water waste when washing clothes by implementing a filter that allows reusing the water that goes through the washing machine in other tasks, such as washing dishes, watering the garden, and even flushing the toilet.
“To Ternium, thank you very much for giving us these opportunities to learn new things. It is wonderful, I have enjoyed being here these days,” said the second-semester Industrial Maintenance student.
For his part, Brayan Ramirez, a second-semester Industrial Maintenance student, worked with his team on a project to clean the Pesqueria River using a machine that works with hydraulic energy.
“I have learned many things about how to create a sustainable proposal to support the environment. I have really liked the practices, the projects we are doing and how they explain each thing to us,” he added.
Concerning waste, one proposal was the installation of hydraulic motors with filters to contain garbage in sewers during floods. Other teams proposed trash-collecting robots in public areas and trash cans with compressors, as well as vending machines that perform product exchanges to recycle.
There were also projects aimed at saving endangered animals, such as black bears, preventing noise pollution in factories, and reusing PET waste.
The evaluation process and next steps
After three days of learning and project development, participants had the opportunity to present their projects to more than 30 academics and professionals - a program record - who evaluated them and provided feedback. The evaluators work at different institutions, such as the Roberto Rocca Technical School, i2p2 and the Polytechnic University of Apodaca, among others.
“Hopefully we will continue to collaborate because this is the way forward for our country,” highlighted Alex Elías Zúñiga, research professor at the Institute of Advanced Materials for Sustainable Manufacturing at Tecnológico de Monterrey.
The objective of the bootcamp is for students to continue developing the projects during their academic career, so that they can later implement them in their community. To this end, workshops to identify socio-environmental problems are held in collaboration with Sociedad Sostenible A.C. (SOSAC), and the development and approach to the problem is carried out in conjunction with Metconecta, a business incubator.
“A company that helps the community is always welcome; they open their doors everywhere,” concluded Óscar Martínez, a research professor at the institute.