The Architecture, Construction, and Engineering Mentor Program of Southeast Tennessee and North Georgia held its annual awards banquet, giving student participants a chance to present the work they have done over the fall semester program. 

ACE is an after-school mentoring program that gives high school students the opportunity to meet with architects, engineers, and builders to learn about careers in the design and construction industry.  Students gain experience in working on a real-world project and compete for scholarships to pursue an ACE career beyond high school. 

This year’s student project focused on redeveloping a historic, vacant school into a workforce development center for career awareness, training and business education in the construction industry. Students were tasked with developing a program, budget, floor plans, exterior elevations and other drawings/models to clearly define their proposal.   

Four local high schools - Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences, Howard High School, East Ridge High School and Lafayette High School– embraced the project and sent teams to work on the assignment. Two open teams, one meeting at EMJ Corporation and the other at Tinker Ma Inc., included students from other various local schools.  

The winning team consisted of students from the Chattanooga School of Arts and Sciences. Team CSAS’s presentation was well delivered. Twelve students divided into four groups to construct a training center, business center and vocation center on the campus, bringing each concept together to create a location that students believe that peers would want to come. Panelists Sarah Page of Franklin Architects and current AIA President, Nic Cornelison of P&C Construction and current AGC East Tennessee chairman, and David Hudson of Artech Design Group were impressed with the group’s collaboration and focus on community impact, particularly references to the Glass House Collective initiative and pointedly bringing art into the project as well. 

Following team presentations scholarships totaling $16,000 were awarded to four ACE students. Sydney Morris of CSAS received the Bruce Simonson/AIA Scholarship, Anderson White of McCallie received the EMJ Scholarship, Jace Holt of McCallie received the AGC East Tennessee Scholarship, and John Lazenby of CSAS received the ACE Mentor Program Scholarship. John Lazenby has also been selected to compete for the CMiC- Allen Berg Memorial Scholarship through the National ACE Mentor Program. 

ACE is actively recruiting architect, engineer, and construction mentors for the 2020-2021 program.  To become a mentor, please register at www.acementor.org.