ACE Students Become Galloway Interns
Galloway has taken ACE mentorship beyond the classroom. This summer, two high school students in the ACE Mentor Program joined our team for a month to experience architecture and engineering in a workplace environment.
“I wanted to find a way to benefit the community further,” said Diego Mireles-Hernandez, CADD technician at Galloway. “There are a lot of people at that age that do not have a mentor. You lose a lot of incentive to pursue higher education if you have not been exposed to what the professional world can be like and what it can do for you.”
Diego mentored Galloway’s first high school intern, Max Richards, last year. Diego saw how beneficial the opportunity was for Max, himself, Galloway, and the community. Having already connected with ACE, Galloway reached out to see what students would be interested in.
Over the last month, Diego and architectural designer Mia Beltran worked with ACE students Amir Khabiri and Keegan Gomez on engineering and architectural skills and workplace soft skills. Mia worked with Keegan on the highlights of an architecture project lifecycle, from modeling in Revit, construction documents, reviewing code, and responding to permitting comments. He also shadowed other architects.
“Not many people get this experience, especially in high school,” said Mia. “This does help prepare future architect students and exposes them to what a workplace environment is like.”
Keegan recently graduated from Centaurus High School and is studying architecture at Cal Poly. He feels the internship was beneficial.
“I loved seeing real projects and the sheer size of them. It’s neat to see what it might look like to work in these fields before committing to years of school to them. Going into college this fall, I feel that I’ll have a step up on others with this unique experience,” said Keegan.
Diego worked with Amir on grading plans and standards and utility plans and standards, and Amir had one-on-one training with Galloway’s Civil 3D and BIM integration
and training specialist.
“Here at Galloway, they provided me with an amazing opportunity to feel the waters and get my foot through the door,” said Amir. “They allowed me to have training in the software and sit in the meetings with them and work on some projects. With this experience, I can understand what a civil engineer here at Galloway does and how they do it.”
In addition, Keegan and Amir participated in weekly professional development seminars with Galloway’s college interns. These seminars focused on interviewing best practices, reviewing resumes, what it is like to be an associate, client interactions, networking, and project budgets.
“We are helping them build a network and bridge the gap,” said Diego. There are huge differences between ages 16, 20, and 25. We are all simultaneously learning and mentoring. Amir learned much about Mines, a school he is interested in, from a college intern who currently goes there.”
Galloway is honored to be part of ACE Colorado. We have been involved since 2013, mentoring at Smoky Hill High School for five years, Gateway High School for three years, and virtually due to covid for a year. Programs like ACE are meaningful because we take pride in providing hands-on industry experience and scholarships.
We have sponsored an ACE scholarship since 2019, and the civil engineer at Galloway, Jessica Greenough, is a member of the ACE associate board.
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