ACE Mentor Program Chicago Mentoring Program & Awards Night

Were a little late in covering this, but this year Epstein was a proud supporter and dedicated counselor for the ACE Mentor Program Chicago. From this past October through the final student presentation on April 6th, a devoted team of Epsteins architects, engineers and construction professionals, along with volunteers from Lendlease and GSA, met weekly with a group of ACE High School students and supported, directed and nurtured these future designers and engineers in their development of a program for a proposed Culinary Incubator Campus.

Our ACE team branded their food industry-based program as the Culinary Corner and this 34,500 square foot facility was to be located west of Halsted on Fulton Street, in the heart of the Fulton Market District. The purpose of the Culinary Corner was to serve as facility that helps new and start-up companies to grow by providing food industry-specific management training, office space and business resources. The ACE students Culinary Corner development featured a community garden, office space, demonstration kitchens, auditoriums for lectures and training, a multi-media library, café and green/garden roof.

In addition to preparing a program and design for the Culinary Corner, the ACE students also put together MEP/FP and structural system selections as well as determining structural load calculations. Our ACE students didnt just stop with architecture and engineering services but they also established construction site logistics and developed a detailed 8-month construction schedule.

The final component of our ACE teams projects was the aforementioned student presentation which took place at IITS Hermann Hall on April 6th and gave our students a sense of what a professional world client presentation entailed.

As you can see from the incredible work highlighted here our ACE students did an incredible job during this six month mentoring program and we could not have been more pleased to have played a role in helping these very talented students realize their vision.

As part of the final student presentation, internships and scholarships were awarded by ACE Chicago and firms like Epstein. Over the past 16 years ACE Chicago has granted over $1.3M in scholarships, including $184,000 this year and also this year, Epstein granted a summer internship in architecture to Victoria Piekarz. In addition, our employee-run charity, The Epstein Community Foundation, presented two $500 scholarships to Edilson Uribe and Carlos Villanueva, as well as three $2000 scholarships to Jose Rodriguez, Esther Durosinmi and Matias Gros.

Lastly, the dedicated group of Epstein mentors that donated hundreds of hours of their personal time to this effort were:

Team Leaders - Mark Rustin and Sean Miller

Architects Jenn Pisano, Cassiday Love, Jeffrey McQuiston, John Kolb, Laura Rebbe and Ramona Valeanu.

Engineers Martin Barenbaum, Rick Schlude, Jon Scales, Jake Effinger & Carla Espinoza

Construction Anna Gannon & Jeremy Wright

Congratulations team on a serving as grand examples of AEC professionals for a future generation of architects, engineers and contractors!