Pebble Hills will be sending four handpicked engineering students to compete in the Chevron Design Challenge at Texas A&M in College Station, Texas on Dec. 8-11.   

 Students Robert Liston, Andrew Morales, Oscar Palacios, and Jose Gonzalez will be departing with their Engineering teacher Jacqueline Villalba.  

 The four scholars are set to be the only competitors from El Paso to participate in the nationwide challenge.  

 “I think it’s exciting that I get to represent not only my school, but our city,” said Morales about competing.  “I’m not only getting to leave home but leave El Paso.”  

 Villalba expresses her pride towards her students having this opportunity.

“I always feel like it’s an honor,” Villalba said. “We are very blessed that we get to participate in this. I tell my kids that this is the very selective group that gets to attend this competition…we want the best for our kids, and we want them to have these opportunities outside of El Paso.”  

 The challenge is designed to randomly partner up participants into different groups, despite coming from different cities or states. Officials coordinating the event provide the groups with a certain scenario which will then lead them to create a software to solve the situation.  

The groups are given eight hours and a limitation to design and build a product to tackle the scenario.   

“Less than eight hours to design the whole thing and then build it…they’ll give us the limitations, what we need to do, what needs to be present, and we just make whatever we want from there,” Morales said.  

As a leader, Villalba conveys one of the main reasons is providing students with an opportunity to learn.

“It’s about them gaining that learning experience and seeing what other universities are out there so that they can see what it feels like to attend one of the top engineering schools in the United States.”

Three out of five of Pebble Hills’s former Chevron Design Challenge are currently attending Texas A&M.