The assignment to design the imaginary Envision Peace museum is the latest project for a group of 22 teenagers taking part in the ACE Mentor Program, a 15-year-old initiative to introduce students to careers in architecture, construction, and engineering (ACE).
The program, which has an expected enrollment this year of 250 students in the five-county Philadelphia area, offers teenagers the chance to learn from industry professionals, working alongside them in internships, visiting job sites, and designing buildings based on the real-life specs of those going up in the region.
Over the years, students have worked with volunteer mentors to design their versions of a new dormitory for the University of Pennsylvania, a house for Habitat for Humanity, and retail space at the Comcast Center.
"We tell them to go after the job" as if they were professionals, said Diana Eidenshink, ACE's Northeast regional director - whose father, Charles Thornton, an engineer, cofounded the mentorship program in 1995 to increase diversity in the building trades.
"They work as a team and do the drawings. They put together the ideas about what the building looks like and how much it will cost."
Students then often make their own presentations before the building owners.
This year, many of the participants will take the specs of Philly Live! - a restaurant and entertainment complex slated to be built on the site of the Spectrum in South Philadelphia - and design their own version.
They'll also go on field trips to the trade unions to learn about such aspects as laying bricks and construction-site safety.
According to a 2010 ACE study, 66 percent of the program's 50,000 alumni nationally are either studying architecture, engineering, construction, and the skilled trades, or are already working in one of those fields.
