Preparing Mesa’s future generation for a globally competitive workforce is a crucial undertaking, and Mayor Scott Smith has it covered.

Both the city’s Mayor and Vice Mayor Alex Finter joined Cities United for Science Progress (CUSP), a partnership between The U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) and DuPont, at Keller Elementary School and Roosevelt Elementary School for the Mesa’s “Science in the School Day.”

Nearly 70 fourth graders and 80 fifth graders worked side by side to build “puff mobiles,” a fun hands-on project exploring basic engineering principles that derived from the popular children’s television show ZOOM. Mayor Smith and Vice Mayor Finter joined the students as they built their mobiles using everyday materials like drinking straws, lifesavers, paper, scotch-tape and paperclips.  The council members closed the program by having the students race their inventions to determine the “fastest puff mobile in the school” and presented the winner with a prize.

Mayor Smith highlighted how events like “Science in the School Day,” while fun and interesting, are far from a simple spin on the typical science lesson: “As Mesa continues to grow,” he said, ” it must prepare our future leaders with a strong math and science background. The students in Mesa will no longer compete with Dallas, but with Mumbai and Beijing.  We anticipate that this experience will spark an interest in our students to consider a career in math or science, and perhaps one day aspire to become engineers.”

CUSP is a partnership between The U.S. Conference of Mayors and DuPont.  Through the $5.5 million Lead-Safe…for Kids’ Sake grant program and the acclaimed Science in the School Day initiative, over 55 cities have received grants, 250 cities have been visited, and over 40,000 elementary school children have participated in the USCM-DuPont partnership.  CUSP provides assistance to mayors in promoting and inspiring student’s interest in science and engineering.