V&A engineers participate in ACE Mentor Program;
student receives national scholarship
This year, V&A engineers Ryan Plagens, EIT and Priscilla Flores, EIT, LEED AP mentored a group of
students from John Jay High school as part of Vickrey & Associates, Inc.’s ongoing outreach participation
in the A.C.E. mentor program. Students participating in the program were divided up into 3 groups: an
architectural group, a civil engineering group, and a structural engineering group. The students worked
together, with their mentors, to develop a plan for a new restaurant/lounge they named ‘The Surface’. Ryan
and Priscilla’s group worked on the civil engineering aspects of the project including parking layout
and grading, fire lane and fire hydrant location and a lift station. The other two groups were responsible
for the layout of the building and interior and structural components. Allowing the students to focus on
their specific area of interest garnered more attention from the students and resulted in a final product
they were all proud of.
For the past three years, one student mentored by V&A through the A.C.E. program has received a national scholarship, and this year was no exception. Maggie Orozco, one of the students from John Jay High School who was mentored by Ryan and Priscilla, received a national scholarship and will be attending UTSA in the fall.
Other AEC firms participating in the program included PBK Architects, Jaster-Quintanilla, Journeyman Construction and MBC Engineers. Working together, mentors from V&A and these other firms provided the students with the instruction they needed to complete their vision of the project and offered invaluable insight into their respective fields. Approximately 90% of the students interviewed after the program ended indicated they would be going into one of the three fields, which is a strong indicator of the success of the program.
“Being able to share our knowledge with the students, not only exposes them to these fields, but also helps them understand how things work in the real world - something you typically wouldn’t see until you were almost out of college. They’ll be a step ahead when they get to that point,” notes mentor Ryan Plagens.
