From left: ACE Academy students Ryan Kennell, Logan Evans, Joshua Coon and Valerie Cecchini with the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners.

Sellwood Bridge model detail.

On April 26, students from the ACE Academy presented a scale model of the Sellwood Bridge, including the temporary bridge, to the Board of County Commissioners. ACE is a two-year charter school in North East Portland that uses a project-based curriculum for students interested in careers in architecture, construction and engineering.

The ACE Academy is one of the schools participating in the Sellwood Bridge project’s school-based outreach program, which introduces students to bridge-related careers, hands-on projects and real life civic engagement lessons. The school-based program allows the county to make this once-in-a-lifetime construction project an exciting learning opportunity for students in our area.

I visited the ACE campus with some of our bridge engineers and was really impressed with the students’ ability to answer very complex technical and engineering questions related to their project. This is a true scale model that required very high level mathematical concepts to complete. These students have a really bright future in engineering and architecture.

Thank you to their fabulous ACE teachers, including Marjan Rotting and Doug Mella, and the Sellwood Bridge Team for helping to make the school-based program so successful.