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| ACE Academy student Stasi Rogers, at the base of the ladder, waits his turn while (clockwise) Sean Rogers, Aden Bjelland (face hidden) and Tenzin Woden practice framing walls as a team, one of many construction concepts students learn. |
| Submitted Photo |
Though both students and staff found adapting to the new program problematic at first, from an outsider’s perspective, administration had a harder go. “One of the things you need to learn for management is that you have to come up with a new management system,” Taylor said.
“I don’t know how we could have done it without the team that has been assembled,” Natzel said. “Mike (Taylor) has (an) enormous amount of experience with the superintendents. If he didn’t have that intimate knowledge with the school districts, I don’t know if we could have pulled it off.
Fulfilling their role, the industry sponsors also helped raise the bar for ACE. “Being in this environment, being close to our industry and business partners every day, we are always under the microscope. That constant relationship with them is what has made us aware,” Taylor said. “The directors that I see once a week are quick to tell me what is successful out there. They are very demanding, and that’s what will make us strong.”
ACE’s current condition of flux may in some ways be inherent to its model in that it mirrors the ever-changing working world.
“This is unique,” Taylor said of the program. “Some kids go really well with it, some kids need more structure, some kids don’t like so much emphasis in the design/build industry so we can size to demand. We can be bigger or smaller, but we will create a quality program, and a quality program isn’t the same for every kid. This is quality for those kids who want to be here.” ACE Academy students comprise a wide range of backgrounds, talents and GPAs at their “home” schools, but at ACE they all share a common interest.
The challenge now is to build on the skills learned in the first half of the year, refining leadership roles and demonstrating concepts learned in a real-world environment. “We are looking for projects that we can turn into learning projects, like gazebos in the park or storage units in public facilities,” Taylor said. “The facility that we build it for can get something built for the cost of materials, and it gives us a real job for a real product for a real client.”
Looking forward to next year, the school has recently added seven new classrooms to make way for the incoming juniors. During spring break, the school will host a “taste of ACE” experience to introduce interested sophomores to their concept.
For current students, ACE is busy lining up summer internships and refining the senior program, which will be dominated by the capstone project but will also feature college credit options for the Oregon Institute of Technology and Mt. Hood Community College.
Still in development is ACE’s mentoring program, an intention that has both earned enthusiastic responses and raised logistical issues. “What we were challenged with was getting each student a mentor,” Taylor said. “That would have meant that we would have had to put 120 students out on the street with 120 people.” After brainstorming, ACE decided to continue the multidisciplinary collaboration concept by pairing a group of representatives from each discipline (architecture, construction and engineering) with eight to 12 students comprising each discipline as e-mail pen pals. Teachers provide topic questions and, like an online bulletin board, kids learn both from mentors and from peers’ exchange.
Constructing the ACE educational model from concept to execution required a group of dedicated individuals of diverse backgrounds and fields of expertise to unite under one cause with open minds, a willingness to adapt, and if necessary, the capacity to make a course correction. Some elements remain on the drawing board, but the first semester demonstrates that collaboration, far from diluting responsibility, reinforces it when all involved understand how their roles pertain to the whole. “I’m pretty pleased with the way it has all worked out. Kids speak well of their experience. We have overcome some difficulties with that, (and) kids are clearer about what they are doing. I think that has been a big measure,” Taylor said.
Regarding the scheduling headaches and loose ends still to be tied, Taylor remarked optimistically, “Next year when we do it, we will have things in place that will make it better. It would have been great to have those things in place before, but again, (there are) just some things you learn from experience.” Owning that philosophy will help ACE in aiding Oregon industries to build a more constructive community.
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