KINGSVILLE (February 20, 2026) — In celebration of Engineers Week, the Frank H. Dotterweich College of Engineering at Texas A&M University-Kingsville hosted more than 600 high school and middle school students representing 33 schools, 23 cities and 15 counties across South Texas for the annual Design Competition on Friday morning at Kingsville’s J.K. Northway Exposition Center.
“The purpose of these events is always to expose kids to engineering,” Dean of the College of Engineering Dr. Heidi Taboada said. “I want them to feel that engineering is a field that can be successful to everyone. I always say touch engineering and feel engineering.”
This year, the Design Competition was done in three phases and featured an Aerospace Engineering theme. Phase One was titled ATS: Autonomous Travel to Satellite, where participants were tasked with building a drone and writing code. This phase was a partnership with the company DroneBlocks and Valero. Phase Two was called SORM: Satellite outage Repair and involved building a pneumatic lift before concluding with Phase 3 called RTH: Return to Home. In the final phase, participants built a transport rover.
“It was a pretty cool day because I got to build a bunch of stuff, like some code and a lot of technical buildings,” said Josue Garcia, a Brownsville native and sophomore at Mercedes’ South Texas ISD Science Academy. “We had very little materials to accomplish the goal of raising a tower, which was just water, syringes, and a couple of pieces of plastic. Me, personally, I love aerospace engineering and I love opportunities when it comes to engineering. I like that engineers have to think four steps ahead and in different ways that someone normally wouldn’t because they aren’t faced with the same problems.”
The materials were provided to students, but they were limited, making the tasks both interesting and challenging for competitors.
“This experience has been really good; this is my first time doing it and I’m having a ton of fun,” said Lauryn Moreno, a junior from Santa Gertrudis. “We did have trouble getting to the hot glue gun on time and it kept getting cool, so we used duct tape. We made barn grass out of duct tape.”
For some teachers, the design topic excited them as much as their students as it was related to the curriculum they are currently teaching. That was the case for Chris Cavazos, a teacher at Corpus Christi Moody.
“I love that the kids had some 3D printed materials because we do 3D design in my classroom and I teach my kids fusion and they can get certified in it,” Cavazos said. “They are excited because they get to build something, have fun and it gets them away from the classroom environment and actually learn future engineering skills. I really appreciated the competition was set up because one of the stipulations of our curriculum is to teach hydraulics. I also teach electric motors, servos and currents, so they actually get to apply what they learn in our classroom.”
Several judges from the university would go around and judge each team and selected first-, second- and third-place winners for both high school and middle school, with all six being awarded 3D printers.
A.C. Blunt Middle School Team No. 3 out of Aransas Pass placed first, while the John Jay High School and Engineering Academy out of San Antonio was victorious in the High School Division.
The competition ended with 10 high school seniors with $1,000 scholarships to the TAMUK College of Engineering.
For Taboada, the day was about preparing and investing in the potential future of the College of Engineering.
“These kids are the future pipeline,” Taboada added. “The university is investing in our backyard, but we have kids driving in all the way from Houston and from Brownsville. It’s the future pipeline of engineers and I believe we are doing a very good job at the Frank H. Dotterweich College of Engineering. The growth you can see in our college is coming from the undergraduates and it’s the freshman class that is helping us achieve that.”
Design Competition Winning Teams:
Middle School
- C. Blunt Middle School Team No. 3 (Team 128)
- Tuloso-Midway Middle School 1 (Team 094)
- Falfurrias Junior High (Team 117)
High School
- John Jay High School Science and Engineering Academy (Team 33)
- Harlingen High School Team No. 2 (Team 47)
- Alice High School Team No. 3 (Team 21)
-TAMUK-
