{"id":67639,"date":"2022-12-05T16:30:30","date_gmt":"2022-12-05T23:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=67639"},"modified":"2022-12-05T16:30:30","modified_gmt":"2022-12-05T23:30:30","slug":"gamez-grad-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/gamez-grad-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Engineering an escape (room)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not many students invite their parents to their college to see what they\u2019ve accomplished and then lock said parents in a room.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, not many students are building escape rooms to showcase their engineering skills and inviting hundreds of people to lock themselves in and puzzle their way out either.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Valentin Gamez<\/span><\/b>, a mechanical engineering major at NAU, is that student. And it wasn\u2019t just his parents\u2014about 800 students participated in the 2022 Escape Room earlier this year. It was a runaway success for everyone who made it through the rooms but also for the 50 or so students who built escape room puzzles. It was a fun and unique opportunity to put their skills to work and a great way for Gamez to demonstrate how good he was at his job.<\/span> \"Valentin<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe impact this project had on my life is another reason it is my most proud accomplishment,\u201d he said. \u201cFor more than two years I have been applying for jobs and internships and have faced many, many rejections. With the leadership and technical experience I gained from this project, I was able to land an internship at an amazing company and even get a job offer in my field after graduation.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Gamez came to Flagstaff from Blythe, California; he chose NAU because it had a good engineering program and found numerous opportunities to learn and grow as an engineer and as a person. He joined clubs, found mentors, met professors who guided him and had a lot of fun as he discovered who he was.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now he is preparing to graduate with a hefty resume, a job, experience mentoring other students and mentors who have been with him for years.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that has impressed me the most in the time I have known Valentin has been his thoughtfulness,\u201d said <\/span>Ryan Torres<\/span><\/b>, an engineer at Gore, NAU alumnus and one of Gamez\u2019s mentors. \u201cEvery decision he is presented with is carefully considered and each option is deliberately weighed out. His thoughtfulness and drive to not only get things right, but make them great, will aide him in becoming an excellent engineer.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"ASME
The ASME group working on the Escape Room 2022<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The 2022 Escape Room\u2014start to finish<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Gamez was the treasurer of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), which put on the Escape Room. The club recruited about 50 engineering and applied sciences students to build escape room challenges. Gamez, who was the financial leader of the project, helped raise more than $13,000 to put on this event. Others did administrative work to ensure the three-day project would all come together.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And it did\u2014though not quite without a hitch. (More on that in a minute.) Hundreds of NAU students flocked to the three escape rooms, ready to solve puzzles that led to clues that eventually got them the key to the door. About 50 students from the MIT-e program at Sinagua Middle School also came; this is a magnet program for STEM students and what better way to teach engineering than to make it fun?\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to all his administrative work, Gamez built two puzzles. The first was a box-matching puzzle requiring evidence boxes to be placed in the correct order on a bookshelf. When they were in the correct order, the first evidence box would open. It worked by attaching sensors to each box and sensor readers to specific places on the shelf. When all of the boxes were correctly placed, the sensors sent a signal to an Arduino, which then turned off the magnetic lock and opened the first box. (<\/span>What is an Arduino?<\/span><\/a>)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

His other project was a card reader that, when activated, would turn on a black light and reveal hidden invisible ink messages.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now about that hitch\u2014Gamez had what we referred to as \u201can exciting time\u201d when two projects broke during a group\u2019s run-through. They had 15 minutes to find the problem and fix it before the next group came through. He and another senior, who had the most experience with electronics, jumped in. He ran through the whole project, rechecked the wires, double-checked the code and within 10 minutes diagnosed the problem\u2014a wire that been pulled loose. The other puzzle had a loose wire as well.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was kind of like his own little escape room challenge.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Valentin's
Valentin’s family at the Escape Room<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt was exciting, getting to troubleshoot these projects with my friends with only 15 minutes, and it was very satisfying when we were able to find the issue and fix it,\u201d he said.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The whole experience, from planning to building to running the escape room, was valuable; Gamez and several others, with this on their resumes, found internships and used this to build on their capstone projects and they got people excited about engineering. But for Gamez, having his family here was the best thing about it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was really excited for my family to go through the escape room,\u201d he said. \u201cI do not get many chances to show my family what I have learned here at NAU as an engineer, but the escape room was perfect as they were able to experience the puzzles I built and have fun doing it.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

His time at NAU and beyond<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Gamez joined ASME, the NAU Rocket Club, which took first place in a rocket-building competition earlier this year and helped create United Students of Applied Sciences. During his four years in ASME, he worked closely with club faculty adviser <\/span>Perry Wood<\/span><\/b>, an instructional laboratory coordinator in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Gamez\u2019s work in ASME went beyond the escape room, Wood said; he helped raise money for many student events, he organized tours of the Grand Canyon Railway, Northrup Grumman and the Naval Precision Optical Interferometer to allow students to experience engineering career options, and he hosted youth robotic events with Gore engineers for the Flagstaff Festival Science. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cValentin is an excellent, kind, gifted leader, and I cannot wait to see what he will accomplish as a practicing mechanical engineer,\u201d Wood said.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Gamez also joined EPIC (Equal Partners in Inclusive Community) during his first year of college and was matched with Torres as a mentor. They met every other week during the semester, allowing Torres to check on how Gamez was doing in classes and with life generally. They worked on professional development skills, including resume writing and interview skills <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0This relationship helped get him an internship at Gore.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Valentin
Snowboarding at Snowbowl<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe work he has done this past summer as an engineering intern at W.L. Gore & Associates has impressed me and my colleagues, and I look forward to welcoming him to Gore as a new associate in the spring,\u201d Torres said.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Escape Room 22 wasn\u2019t the only way Gamez put his skills to public use. This summer, he volunteered at a \u201cfix-it clinic\u201d where engineers fixed people\u2019s broken devices, instruments and other broken items. The clinic helped save people money but also kept items out of the landfill.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to internships at Gore last summer and fall, he also worked at a start-up company that aimed to reduce traffic at intersections. And\u2014because he wasn\u2019t busy enough\u2014Gamez was a Peak Performance math tutor; he tutored incoming first-year students so they would be prepared for their required math courses and introduced them to other resources available at NAU.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

All of this helped him to garner attention; he won a Gold Axe award last month. And it also helped him find a job; he starts work at Gore early next year. He\u2019s also thinking about getting a master\u2019s degree sometime in the future after getting some industry experience. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am very grateful for everything NAU has done for me,\u201d Gamez said. \u201cMy time here at NAU has sparked a passion for engineering and furthering my education. This is important to me because before I came to NAU I felt as if I did not have anything I was passionate about.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/p>\n

Heidi Toth | NAU Communications
\n(928) 523-8737 | heidi.toth@nau.edu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not many students invite their parents to their college to see what they\u2019ve accomplished and then lock said parents in a room.\u00a0 Of course, not many students are building escape rooms to showcase their engineering skills and inviting hundreds of people to lock themselves in and puzzle their way out either.\u00a0 Valentin Gamez, a mechanical…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":67644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-community"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}