This Week:

CONTRARY to our schedule, we will be meeting at GSA’s office this Thursday, November 17, 2011. Their office is located at 230 S. Dearborn, in Suite 3600 (on the 36^th floor):

The entrance looks like this:

You should enter on Dearborn (the North-South street) just North of Jackson (the East-West street). You will have to go through a metal detector for security, so don’t bring any dangerous objects that you normally bring (like nail files, knives, etc). Maybe not the best day to try out your new goth jewelry, either. Take the first bank of elevators to the 36th floor and the receptionist will direct you to room 3640.

Make sure you’re there before 6 pm!

Closest ‘L’ Stops:
Blue/Red Lines: Jackson (if you’re coming from the Red line, go through the tunnel to go to the blue line but just keep exiting. The Blue line exit is right in front of the building, almost)
Brown, Orange, Purple, Pink – Harold Washington Library or Adams/Wabash (it’s about a block or two away)

Does anyone take the Metra? Which station are you coming in at? None of them are super close, but not really more than 4-5 blocks away.

In any case, we will be getting an introduction to Property Ownership from GSA (short for General Services Administration). Property ownership is pretty much the reason our industry exists. If people or companies didn’t spend billions of dollars every year developing proptery (read: changing what’s on a piece of land), we wouldn’t have any buildings to build! I’m very interested to see what exactly it is that they do, myself (this is Maureen, by the way).

Let’s recap our last meeting, November 10:

COLLEGE NIGHT!

Last week, we met at Lend Lease’s office. You all were very patient with the powerpoint presentation – we basically just talked the whole time about college. If you want to see a copy of the presentation we did, click here.

There was also a handout, showing what it takes to be an Architect, Engineer or Construction Manager. Look at it again, here.

Keep in mind that while this program is designed to help high school students who want a job in Architecture, Construction and Engineering, you can list this as an activity even if you aren’t applying to a program in any of those fields. We discussed presenting a ‘complete package’ of yourself – colleges are interested in the whole you, even if that other part of you is interested in other things. That’s why they ask about what other activities you’re doing!

If you’re interested in other types of engineering, like mechanical, electrical or computer, the experience of ACE can still get you brownie points. There is a reason all engineers start out together in school – they all need to learn smililar team-work and problem-solving skills.

Scholarships: FREE MONEY!

I emphasized it during our meeting but I will do it again. Scholarships are FREE MONEY! You don’t have to pay it back, you don’t have to do stupid tricks to get it and you get it for just being who you already are!

You can use scholarships on anything during college (if they don’t come directly from the school). If it seems like a $1,000 scholarship is kind of measly compared to how much school costs, remember – that’s a free laptop right there! Or you can put it towards the car you need to get to campus – or the books – or your dorm stuff – whatever you want! FREE MONEY! It’s really unlikely that you will have the opportunity to get FREE MONEY after college – winning the lottery is pretty much it.

So go to a few of these websites, just plug in your typical answers (name, birthday, what you want to study, etc) and submit! If you spend a Thanksgiving break doing college applications, spend one weekend during Winter Break working on scholarship applications. They ask all the same questions – write one good essay and use it on every application (ok, they might need a few words tweeked, but nothing huge!).

www.fafsa.ed.gov
www.finaid.org
www.fastweb.com
www.studentaid.ed.gov
www.scholarships.com
www.haciaschlarshipfoundation.org/scholarships.html – Hispanic American Construction Industry Association Scholarship
www.archfoundation.org/aaf/aaf/Programs.Fellowships.htm – Architecture Minority/Disadvantaged Scholarship
www.hsf.net/Scholarships.aspx?id=426 – Hispanic Scholarship Fund
www.blackexcel.org/06-200-free-scholarships-minorities.htm – 200 Minority Scholarships
http://scholarship.agc.org/ – Associated General Contractors of America
http://www.nahb.org/reference_list.aspx?sectionID=1320 – National Association of Home Builders
http://www.asce.org/LandingPage.aspx?id=68 – American Society of Civil Engineers
http://www.nawic.org/nawic/NFSF.asp – National Associate of Women in Construction
http://content.constructioninst.org/CiScholarship.html – Construction Institute
http://societyofwomenengineers.swe.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=222&Itemid=111 – Society of Women Engineers
http://www.concrete.org/STUDENTS/ST_SCHOLARSHIPS.HTM – American Concrete Institute
http://chicagoarchitecturetoday.com/colleges.htm#ARCHITECTURAL_ACADEMIC_AWARDS
– Chicago Architecture Today
http://www.aianei.org/Scholarships.html – American Institute of Architects, Northeast Illinois Chapter
http://www.asse.org/foundation/scholarships/scholarships.php – American Society of Safety Engineers
http://www.nationalhousingendowment.org/category.aspx?sectionID=1717&channelID=1407 – National Housing Endowment
http://www.ifdaef.org/scholarships.php – International Furnishings & Design Association
http://www.phccweb.org/Tools/content.cfm?ItemNumber=10677&navItemNumber=10156 – Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association
http://www.lafoundation.org/scholarship/ – Landscape Architecture Foundation
http://www.asid.org/asid_foundation/SCHOLARSHIPS_and_AWARDS.html – American Society of Interior Designershttp://www.jachicago.org/index.php?page=scholarships
– Junior Achievement – did you do this in elementary school? They would have come to your classroom
http://www.ccc.edu/100YearScholarships/ – City Colleges of Chicago Scholarship (DUE NOV 18!!!)
http://www.siemens-foundation.org/en/advanced_placement.htm – You can get a Siemen’s scholarship if you got a 5 on an AP exam.
http://content.seinstitute.org/committees/OppStudents.html – Structural Engineering Institute
http://www.crca.org/crca_scholarship/index.htm – Chicago Roofing Contractors Association (Easy applicant requirements!)
http://www.nibca.net/scholarships.asp – Northern Illinois Building Contractors Associations
https://www.horatioalger.org/scholarships/index.cfm – Horatio Alger Association
http://www.hsf.net/ – Hispanic Scholarship Fund
http://www.ilma-lakes.org/?q=scholarship-grant-application – Illinois Lakes  Management Association (if you want to do water management)

That was an easy list to make: Google + “Construction Scholarship” = $$$!

ACE Team Six Trivia of the Week:

Scenario: you know you’re interested in architecture. You know you want to study it in school and you know you want to be an architect. However, you’re not one… yet! You want to be a member of the American Institute of Architecture in order to get information on scholarships and meet other interested students and professionals – what do you do?

This is a tough, open-ended question. Do you best!