Fish & Richardson Sends Kids to Space

Fish & Richardson has awarded full scholarships to three San Diego The Preuss School UCSD middle school students – Markus Jones, Estrella Peña Martínez and Christopher Santiago – to attend the U.S. Space & Rocket Center Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. The students and their teacher chaperone – Shaoni Bandyopadhyay – spent six days at the camp in mid-July. The goal of Fish’s Space Camp Scholarship program – which the firm has run for 17 consecutive years – is to get middle school students excited about the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

The scholarship winners – who received full tuition, round-trip airfare and accommodations –experienced simulated space shuttle missions, participated in programs on space exploration and learned about mission control. Each of the students also received a space suit.

Fish selected The Preuss School UCSD due to the charter middle and high school’s focus on low income students who strive to become the first in their families to graduate from college. Fish attorneys – including Megan Chacon, who leads the program in San Diego – selected the scholarship winners based on a written application and an in-person interview. Each year, Fish sends 33 students – from economically disadvantaged areas in the 11 cities across the country where the firm has offices – along with teacher chaperones to Space Camp.

The application for the scholarship includes several questions as to why the student should be selected as well as what the student finds interesting about space. Scholarship recipient Markus Jones wrote in his application that he would like to go on a mission to Mars to see if that planet “could be a place where people could live.” Estrella Peña Martínez said she would like to “experience what astronauts do in space” while Christopher Santiago views flying on the Space Shuttle as “an opportunity of a lifetime that one in a million people would ever have.”

“We have sent over 400 students to Space Camp since we first launched this scholarship program in 1999. It is a privilege for us to be a part of encouraging these students’ love of STEM and to provide the spark that may put them on a path to careers in these growing fields,” said Roger Denning, managing principal of Fish’s San Diego office. “The STEM fields are a critical foundation for our country’s future economic success, so it is important to get more young people excited about these professions and the opportunities they present.”

The students will soon meet with the attorneys from Fish to “report on their mission” and talk about their experiences as junior astronauts for a week. For the attorneys, it is another opportunity to encourage the students to keep on exploring STEM and to excel in their studies when they return to school in the fall.