ROGERS — “It’s OK to like math,” Leah Miramontes told students gathered at Heritage High School on Tuesday night.

She has always loved math said Miramontes, college sophomore and outreach chairwoman for the University of Arkansas chapter of the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers.

Students from the college and the high school’s junior chapter of the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers partnered for Noches de Ciencias or science night at the school. In high school she wanted to build a bridge, said Miramontes, who's studying to be a civil engineer. Her goals have changed but she still loves math.

“I didn’t want to be the nerd,” she said.

It is OK to be nerdy, Miramontes says.

It was a common thread for college members of the college club.

Abel Trespalacios, sophomore computer science major at the university and contact for the Fayetteville junior chapter, said he always wanted to be an engineer. He doesn’t want other students to deal with the stigma of loving math in high school.

“It was not cool,” he said.

Victoria Rodriguez, junior computer science major at the university said she thought she wanted to be a teacher in high school, but something was missing. A robotics class cued her in to the idea of engineering. Now she has a vision for designing military aircraft.

On Tuesday the team gave teens three sheets of newspaper, two feet of tape and challenged them to build a tower with a foundation that would keep it from toppling.

Math is the toolbox of science and science is the endeavor to understand the natural world, said Erick Mulkey, chemistry teacher at Heritage High School.

Classroom instruction is guided by content, Mulkey said. Students need the foundations of science to understand it, but learning by trial and error, he said, like the students rolling and taping their papers, will give them a chance to push their boundaries using a simple idea. Having that finished product is what drives engineers, Mulkey said.

“This is what get’s engineers involved. This is the fun part,” he said.

Trespalacios said he's been working with real time control systems. He writes the code that tells objects what to do.

To other people it might look like a string of words, letters or numbers that don’t make sense, but to Trespalacios every word represents a command he’s programmed in.

“I can go line by line and tell you what it does,” he said.

The engineering club fills a niche in the high school because it has a science, technology, engineering and math focus, said Brig Cauldwell, student relations coordinator and club sponsor. The national organization offers curriculum. University of Arkansas students visit every other week to talk to students.

Alexi Pocasangre, a Heritage sophomore and club member, said he's a member of other science clubs at the high school, such as chemistry club. He joined the engineering club after seeing a poster and hopes to see the year-old club bring other clubs together. The high school students are planning an astronomy night.

Heritage student Aisling Gibson, senior and president of the junior Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers at the school said her career goal is to become a doctor, but she joined the club because of her interest in bio-medical engineering.

“I know it’s important to have a major that’s not generic,” Gibson said.

Claudia Chavez, university junior and college representative to the Heritage club, said there's a lot of opportunity in engineering. As an industrial engineering major she has a summer internship and an internship for credit through the school. Her branch of engineering deals with production and statistics, Chavez said. A former psychology major, she likes engineering because she can see results.

“When you have a problem and you spend so many hours on it and you solve it? Oh, it’s a beautiful thing,” Chavez said.