NOCC students unveil design for former Six Flags
By Makenna Mincey
Contributing Writer
High school students across New Orleans came together this year to do something big for their city: design an ideal recreation and entertainment venue.
On April 17 at 6 p.m. in the Senator Ted Hickey Ballroom of the University of New Orleans’ University Center, students from the New Orleans Career Center (NOCC) presented their project – a water park and a multi-story outdoor entertainment venue – at the ACE graduation ceremony.
“The students participating in ACE this year at NOCC have been doing an excellent job working with the architect, construction, and engineering mentors to come up with a creative idea that they would like to see in the community,” said Brett Ruppel, chief construction officer at RNGD, a Palmisano Company.
“They began the year by storyboarding out the idea into a real project and have progressed through the design, engineering, construction cost and build schedule of what they thought up. Exposing the students early to the three ACE disciplines with participating mentors from local companies gives the real-world connection to a future career that is sometimes hard to envision,” Ruppel continued.
The ACE Mentor Program of America connects students at New Orleans Career Center with professionals in architecture, construction and engineering fields, and then challenges them to use what they have learned to create the change they want to see in their community. With guidance from their mentors, NOCC students in the ACE Mentor Program reimagined the former New Orleans East Six Flags property as the “Bottom of the Bayou” water park.
“At the beginning of the school year we all came together and we were just looking for a place to build something in and we ended up doing a water park idea. So, we went back to the old Six Flags because you know, it’s kind of the same structure of a water park, however it’s not really being used,” said Fatima Hernandez, a NOCC student.
The efforts of this program go far beyond the culminating project, though. The ACE program has been around for 30 years, dedicated to creating a better equipped and inclusive workforce by providing new skills and new goals for its students, while also benefiting them socially.
“With this program I was able to learn how to quickly communicate with everybody else, how to read a situation, and also how to be able to just understand everybody’s different opinions, because that was like a big thing with my group. We came up with different ideas and then we had to discuss whether it was good for our project or not, so I think, like a lot of social skills were such a good gain for me,” Hernandez stated.
In total, 53 students and 20 mentors participated in the ACE Mentorship Program this year, divided into three teams. This is only a portion of the amazing work that came from the program’s talent this year. The next generation of New Orleans infrastructure is here, and the future is looking brighter than ever before.
“I heard about this program and the first year that I mentored local high school students I was like, ‘Wow, I wish I had something like this growing up,’” said ACE Mentorship Program Chair for New Orleans Lexi Tengco.
Tengco, a vice president with Multi.Studio, an architecture firm which specializes in education design, believes the program is helping to unlock untapped resources for the city’s design and development future – a new generation of architecture and design professionals.
“I think it’s a tremendous benefit,” Tengco continued, “especially because we have so much development in New Orleans and we really want to retain that local talent. So, in order to do that, you have to show students opportunities that exist after they graduate.”
To learn more about the ACE Mentor Program, visit www.acementor.org.
