Meet Travis Maekawa

Meet our new Computer Science teacher, Mr. Maekawa. Get ready to be jealous, he grew
up in Hawaii on the island of Oahu in a town called Mililani. His father is an environmental
engineer and his mother has a degree in accounting (lots of smarts in this family). He went to
a very large high school of 2,700 students. While he was a junior he attended a multicultural
program at BYU, after which he made it a goal to attend BYU after graduating high school. He
started college majoring in the medical field but after taking tons of chemistry and biology
classes had a change of heart. In one of his classes, he had been using a lot of computer
programming and realized computer science was what he wanted to do. A computer science
major was born!
Many of you may have met Mr. Maekawa before he started teaching this year. His wife, whom
most of us have come to know as Ms. Gaza, has been teaching in the district for three years
now. When she was coaching volleyball he often stopped by to help. He grew to love the
community so when the job came up for teaching computer science, he was excited to apply.
A couple of fun facts about Mr. Maekawa: first, for all you dog lovers, he owns a Jack Russell
Chihuahua. Second, he loves baseball and has played all his life. He played baseball in High
School and his team made it to the State Championship. Unfortunately, his team didn’t win but
the game was on TV and thousands of people watched it (bragging rights)! His
shortstop teammate even went on to play the third baseman for the Texas Rangers.
Welcome to Juab High School, Mr. Maekawa!