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Virtual High School Mentoring Opportunity

The Civil Engineering and Architecture Design (CEA) programs at Woodrow Wilson High School (DISD), Hillcrest High School (DISD), and McKinney High School are combining forces virtually for the 2020-2021 school year to challenge their students with a group design project called “InterCEA” based on a real-world development in McKinney. As I’m sure most of you know, WWHS and HHS are two schools we have been heavily involved with in the past, and I’m hoping we can continue our involvement even with in-person schooling being in flux.

All three schools in this InterCEA partnership utilize the Project Lead the Way curriculum and will have 15-20 cross-campus/cross-district student project teams. They would like to have least one engineering and one architectural mentor for each team to support the students during their project. The projects will culminate with the production of specific project deliverables and competitive presentations to a panel of industry professionals. The project is being loosely formatted based on the ACE Mentor Program, for those of you that are familiar with that program.

The focus of this project in the Fall semester will be on residential design, and the Spring semester will focus on commercial design. The students will be enrolled in the CEA class for both semesters, and then the intent is that this project will incorporate what students are learning in the CEA course, including 3D modeling skills in Revit and/or SketchUp. Please consider volunteering in one of the following capacities:

•       Mentoring a project team in the Fall 2020 semester (starting around mid-October)
•       Mentoring a project team in the Spring 2021 semester
•       Mentoring a project team for both the Fall and Spring semesters (student teams would change for second semester)
•       Serving as a judge on a presentation panel during mid- to late January (1st semester residential project team presentations)
•       Serving as a judge on a presentation panel during early to mid-June (2nd semester commercial project team presentations)
  
  Mentors would be meeting virtually with their students for 30-60 minutes every week or every two weeks. The teachers are starting off the school year and will not be needing your help until around mid-October. However, in the meantime they would like all interested mentors to fill out the survey linked below:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSciKsm3Q7ak-Z8lmLfkLbO_qGUYvPRob21zRwPiz9Di6A2v0Q/viewform

If you have any questions about the program please contact Jonathan Brower at [email protected]