THS Students Design Eco Center Through Mentoring Program

students involved with the presented their end-of-school design Thursday afternoon at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark.

The students designed an Eco Development Center that would provide educational overnight camps, research facilities, and an auditorium for presentations. The team consisted of 25 freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors, as well as professional adult mentors employed in the fields of architecture, construction and engineering.

Yvonne Witter, who is an employment counselor at THS, supervises ACE. She said this year’s group of students had an overwhelming amount of enthusiasm that they applied to their building design.

About 60 students initially signed up for this year’s program before the final tally was brought down to a more manageable 25. She currently has a waiting list for next year.

“Parents with children who’ll be graduating from the middle school are calling me about the ACE Program because they want their children in it,” Witter said.

STUDENTS PRAISE ACE

This was the first year in ACE for junior Khaliyah Legette. She wants to study bio-engineering when she goes to college.

She said ACE was interesting because she learned about architecture and how to do design work. Her favorite part of the program was the trips to .

“The first time we went to FDU we heard a lecture about engineering, and the second time we saw different experiments and did hands-on things like mixing concrete,” she said.

Sophomores Lorenzo O’Reilly and Daniel Rodriguez both praised ACE for giving students a chance to use their skills and creativity in real-life applications.

“This was really fun, and I’d recommend it to any student,” said O’Reilly, who is leaning toward a career in law enforcement but wants to study architecture, construction and engineering “because they are great career options.”

Rodriguez said he’s still deciding whether he wants to go into architecture or engineering.

“I’m good in math, so engineering would be good for me,” he said.

O’Reilly and Rodriguez worked on the second-floor design of the eco center.

“Our main thing was to make places where the kids would sleep and hang out,” Rodriguez said. “We worked on it really hard. The whole team worked on the project well, and it came out nice in the end.”

Senior Brian Santostefano, who plans to attend Rowan University in the fall, was able to put a career to his math skills after being a part of ACE for the last two years.

“If the school didn’t have this program, I would have had no idea what I wanted to do in college,” he said. “This really helped me out.”

Santostefano was experienced in an engineering software called AutoCAD, so he helped to compose the layout of one of the floors for the building.

“I actually drew it on the computer,” he said.

Senior Oghoghosa Igbineweka was one of the main speakers for the team. Eight schools in all were at Thursday’s event.

“I was a little bit nervous speaking at first, but the nerves went away,” she said. “We did lots of practice runs before today.”

Igbineweka plans to study mechanical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh in the fall. This was her first year in ACE.

“This program helped solidify my decision to go into engineering,” she said. “I did do a summer camp at Villanova, but ACE made me realize even more that this is what I wanted to go into.”

ACE OPENS DOORS FOR STUDENTS

Architect Rod Watkins was part of the adult team of professional mentors. 

He said the students embraced a green model in regards to materials for their building.

“They wanted to reuse resources, such as catching rainwater on the roof to use for irrigation,” he said.

Other professional mentors in attendance were Elizabeth Bouvier, Meghan Burbank, Kenneth Ross and Virginia Logan, whose daughter Olivia was in ACE last year and won a scholarship through the program. Olivia has since graduated and is studying engineering at the University of Maryland-College Park.

Virginia said ACE does a good job of letting students know what their course of study will be like as they advance in their education.

“As a female in a predominantly male work environment – even going back to college – I know what she’s in for,” said Virginia, who works in the construction industry. “I think this prepared Olivia both academically and socially in terms of knowing what to expect. ACE just opens up the door for students to entertain these different fields and think that ‘I can do this.’”

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