‘I can make a difference,’ standout CSN student says

By Ian Whitaker

Sunday, May 15, 2016 | 2 a.m.

Robin Mendoza couldn’t stand the sight of blood, which ruled out being a doctor or a nurse.

So at the urging of her parents, who wanted her to go into medicine, she instead settled on pursuing a career in pharmacy. She studied the subject at the College of Southern Nevada’s high school, a program for college-bound students offered in partnership between CSN and the Clark County School District, but she quickly found herself struggling.

She’d always been an excellent student, but she had never been interested in medicine and didn’t feel motivated.

“I was unhappy and wasn’t doing well,” she said. “It was my parents’ expectation that I should be a doctor or a nurse or a pharmacist. It wasn’t my decision.”

But one class changed everything. Needing a science credit, she took an environmental studies course that expanded her knowledge of renewable energy and water conservation. In the process, it prompted her to pursue a career in the solar industry, and she began exploring the environmental studies program at UNLV.

All that was left was one more hurdle, but it was a big one. She had to break the news to her mom and dad — a kindergarten teacher and a mail processor for the U.S. Postal Service, respectively.

“They were really concerned at first,” she said. “They asked a ton of questions. ‘How much money will it cost? How many years of school do you have to take?’ ”

Mendoza provided the answers, and her parents came around. She enrolled at UNLV, driving nearly an hour each day from her family’s house near Mount Charleston to attend classes.

A self-described “dorky Asian nerd” who’d rather stay home to work on a project than party, Mendoza took off quickly on her new path. Through a class she took as a junior in the fall of 2013, she connected with the Clark County Wetlands Park, which commissioned her to digitally map the park’s trails. Over the course of a few days, she and a small group of classmates measured the distances between landmarks and amenities using a GPS system, then used a computer program to plot the information.

The result was an updated park map still in use by the wetlands, which provides a printed version of it to visitors.

The out-of-the-way nature reserve on the valley’s far east side still holds a special place in her heart.

“I’m really happy that, just as they were a building block for me, I got to be a building block for them,” she said.

But she didn’t stop there. Aided by college credit she earned in high school, Mendoza breezed through her undergraduate coursework in only two years. She graduated in 2014 and immediately began pursuing a master’s degree in public administration.

Her work led to involvement with CADRA, a research project that connects nonprofit organizations with a library of data about trends throughout the state. By using the data to identify needs around Nevada, nonprofits can decide what programs need to be created.

Due to Mendoza’s background in mapping, Las Vegas-based research firm Applied Analysis gave her an opportunity to integrate a mapping function into its extensive data cache. Applied Analysis works extensively with state government and major clients in the private sector, and its recent high-profile work includes an examination of the economic impact of the Tesla Gigafactory battery-manufacturing plant in Reno, as well as research on the feasibility of Gov. Brian Sandoval’s $1.1 billion tax package last year.

For Mendoza, the prospect of working alongside some of the state’s leading researchers at age 20 gave her pause.

“I thought it’d be super hard because my background isn’t in computer science, but they were really accommodating,” she said.

One of her creations was a map of statewide education data, which allowed users to see at a glance which counties and districts performed better than their neighbors.

Today, Mendoza is a graduate intern at the Las Vegas Valley Water District. She’s on course to earn her master’s degree this winter and has already decided that water policy is her calling.

“I feel like no matter where I am in Nevada, I can make a difference,” she said.