November 5, 2019

This week marks the kick-off of this years ACE Mentor Program! As a past Affiliate of the Year award winner, ACE Mentor Chicago takes a hands-on approach to helping students learn about careers in architecture, construction, engineering and related professions.

During this 7-month program, students will not only be introduced to each of the AEC fields, they will also develop a project of their own based on the CIRT National Design & Construction Competition, which requires ACE Mentor Affiliate teams (students and mentors) to create a design solution.

Epstein, who has been helping lead a mentorship group for the past five years, hosted an introduction event Monday evening at our office. During this program, we had the opportunity to meet the students well be working with and hear why they wanted to participate in ACE, what they hope to get out of the program and what discipline they find of interest.

The evening also consisted of hearing from a guest speaker, Michelle Perl, who is a professional chef (and mom to one of our Epstein employees), as the students are designing a culinary center for their project this year. Michelle spoke about her experience in the kitchen and different types of work environments.

The gastronomic facility project will be entered for a national ACE competition in March and will also be presented to all of the ACE Chicago teams at IIT in May. For this ACE assignment, Epstein is partnered with Lendlease & ESD.

Our project will be comprehensive in that it will showcase not only architectural and interior design, but it will also allow the students to work on all the different engineering systems as well as cost estimating and construction schedules, said our Samantha Schneider, Design Professional and ACE volunteer.

In addition to Sam, Team Epstein consists of: Alexus Davis, Herve Sivuilu, Anna Mui, Ilyssa Kaserman, Sarah Bush, Laura Rebbe, Hannah Perl, Katie Bolger, Brian Foss, Christine Greene, Jeff McQuiston, Tim Gall and Matt Helfenbein.

Good luck to Team Epstein and all involved!