ACE Mentor Nashville Team 6 meeting

Posted by Dan Ryan on January 24, 2018
Posted in: ACE Mentor program, Architecture, Construction, Engineering, Uncategorized. Leave a comment

Team 6 from Stratford Magnet School in Nashville recently took a field trip and also generated some great meeting notes from their work.

Here is just a sample of their thoughts:

Date: Thursday, January 11, 2018
Project: 18601 Aquaponics Garden
Subject: Brainstorm, goals, draft schedule
Present: Students: Ashley Hernandez, Bibiana Zermeno, Erin Burdick, Kerrick
Sornthong, Melanie Tapia, Michael McCall, Mohamed Ahmed, Robert Tapia, Sadie
Escalona, Samuel Armstead, Vianney Muniz
Mentors: Allison Sonnenberg, Ben Chandler, Kara Oravetz, Mathew Smith, Rachel
Gresham (5)

The following is a summary of our understanding of items discussed and decisions reached during the referenced meeting. These notes, and subsequent clarifications, form the basis for future decisions.
1) Design of the system
a. Use fish poop to fertilize plants
b. Want system to move
c. Layered structure
d. Floating garden, water must move
e. Layer plants based on sunlight
f. Plants and fish in certain relationship for fertilization
g. Tubes from fish tank to plants
h. Water fall feeds fish tank and plants
i. Glass plant containers
j. Square spiral with water
k. Powered by hydropower
l. How do contain fish
m. Scissor lifts to move water
n. What do we do when its cold?
i. Greenhouse
ii. Moving canopy
2) Plan outlining fish and plants to be grown
a. Bottom feeders and crustaceans
b. Ask Karl about plants and fish. What is
3) Schedule of design and construction expectations
Jan 25 – nail down design
Feb 8 – start drawings and finalize design, photograph
Feb 22 – begin on model, photograph, draw
March 1 – potential extra meeting to work
March 9 – work on model, photograph draw
March 15 – potential extra meeting to work
March 22 – finish model, photograph, draw
March 29 – potential extra meeting to work
April 12 – speaking skills, final information,
presentation
April 19 – Practice
April 26 – Banquet!
May 3 – Celebration!

, flowing from top arl chef’s menu?
design, know what materials to use draw, begin presentation finish model, finish  drawings, presentation, how do we transport model?

4) Deliverable Goals
a. Blueprints
b. Model
c. photographs

5) Management Approach
a. To be determined at January 25 Meeting

You can learn more about the ACE mentor program by clicking here:

ACE Mentor kicks off at Stratford

Posted by Dan Ryan on November 17, 2017
Posted in: ACE Mentor program, Architecture, Construction, Engineering, Nashville, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

The ACE team at Stratford STEM kicked off our year with some team building exercises. We worked together to “cross the Cumberland River”.

We also cracked the code to launch the UFO auto pilot back to earth by lining up in birthday order without using our voices. To embrace the challenges, lines of communication and problem solving strategies were developed between mentors and students. We will use these new found connections to develop an awesome project this year!

ACE Alumni Update: Matthew Crispi-TTU

Posted by Dan Ryan on November 1, 2017
Posted in: ACE Mentor program, Alumni, Engineering, Engineering as a profession, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Matthew is an alum of the Greater Nashville area ACE Mentor program and he recently sent us this update about how things are going.

If you know of other alums of our program, let them know we want to keep in touch and share their updates also.

Matthew CrispiOver the summer, I worked as an intern at Collier Engineering, a civil engineering firm in Brentwood.  While there I did a variety of work and it was a great experience for me and my fellow interns.

I was elected to be the fundraising chair for the Tennessee Tech ASCE chapter at the end of last year, so I’ve been in charge of raising money for our chapter. I recently finished writing a sponsorship proposal to send to TTU alumni and engineering firms in order to gain sponsors.

The steel bridge is coming along smoothly this year. Our design is very strong and I think we stand a good chance for the competition coming up in March. We have our entire team from last year as well as some new members to help speed up the fabrication process, which has given us a boost regarding time constraints.

As you can tell, the past few months have been really busy for me and I’m excited for what’s to come over the rest of the year.  Best wishes to all of those involved with the ACE Mentor program.