On a cool evening on Nov. 21, about 90 high school students wearing hard hats toured the Collin College Technical Campus in Allen. They walked room to room, getting hands-on experience and learning about different careers in architecture, construction, and engineering.
These students are part of ACE Mentoring of Plano/Frisco, an afterschool program designed to introduce high school students to careers in architecture, construction, and the engineering industry, including skilled trades.
Mentor Coordinator and Stantec architect Samantha Markham said every week the students learn about different disciplines that range from architecture to civil engineering to plumbing to landscaping. One night out of the year the students get to visit and tour a live job site. This year the Collin College Technical Campus, which is under construction in Allen, was selected. The campus will open in fall 2020.
“We expose them to a building that is in progress, where they get to see the bones and the guts of the building, which they don’t usually get to see,” Markham said. “They also get to see how many people it takes to actually make this happen, not only on the architect and engineering end but all the contractors, sub-contractors, and the tradesmen. This is a great way to expose them to all the options they have after high school.”
[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”49″ display=”basic_thumbnail” thumbnail_crop=”0″]In each room, students visited stations and spoke with industry professionals about their jobs. At one station, students learned about project management and worked with tools putting up dry wall, other students were using virtual reality to “see” what the inside of the campus would be like once it is completed.
“It couldn’t have been a better fit for a site visit because this is something that our students can come to in the future,” Markham said. “They’re juniors and seniors in high school, and this facility can teach them everything they want to know about what they’re getting exposed to in the ACE program. We hope to continue working with Collin in the future.”
Matthew Schrodel is a senior project manager with McCarthy Building Companies working on the Technical Campus. He helped set up the tour with ACE Mentoring.
“We have a big push right now to reach out to high school students to try to get people into our industry because there is a huge labor shortage right now, both on the trades side and on the management side,” Schrodel said. “We look for any ways possible to promote our industry with people coming up because what we’ve found is people just don’t know that what we do is a job that is available to them.”
Collin College’s Director of Construction Programs Craig Johnson said the Technical Campus was built to meet growing industrial and trade needs, and the sooner students can learn about these fields the better.
“Our focus is bringing in new blood, bringing new people into the industry,” Johnson said. “A big part of our focus is going to be on high school students and dual credit students.”
Johnson also explained that the industry is fast-changing, and everyone is in a hurry to fill the labor shortages, so Collin College’s two-year programs fit perfectly to meet the industry needs.
“The way our programs work here at Collin is we have industry partners and advisory committees that are telling us what they need and how they need to be trained, and so we’ve put those programs together to provide a product they’re asking for,” Johnson said. “We’re going out to high schools and programs like ACE and attracting those students and telling them about the needs and educating them about these industries.”