Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) helps thousands of educationally disadvantaged students to become engineers, scientists and other math-based professionals urgently needed by industry.

The MESA Program is administered by MESA Centers located at 19 universities in California. Each university is affiliated to numerous middle and high schools in their local area.

The UCLA MESA program is one of those MESA Centers. Headed by Catherine Douglas it serves 21 middle and high schools in the greater LA area. At those schools, students have the opportunity to build projects and connect with students in their community to be able to participate on engineering competitions with the help of their advisor. At UCLA, the students have the opportunity to participate on outreach events sponsored by campus engineering organizations, as well as the competitions which are sponsored by the MESA centers.