by Zachary Harmuth
On Tuesday afternoon, outside the Williamson County Animal Control and Adoption Center behind Franklin High School, a group of county high school students unveiled plans they created for what will be an Equine Emergency Housing Barn in Lieper’s Fork.
As part of the ACE Mentor Program, some 15 students from five county high schools worked for the past few months with the Williamson County Animal Control and Adoption Center to design the much-needed shelter for horses who the county has adopted.
The ACE program, which stands for Architecture, Construction and Engineering, lets students interested in those fields get a taste for it in the real world.
The year long program starts by giving them hands on opportunities, such as job shadowing, and culminates in the creation of a real project, in which students make all the designs and draw all the plans. This year’s theme was community.
We challenged the students to go out and find a project, and the animal shelter had a need, and the students voted to take up the project,” Brittany Shepherd, ACE Team Leader and Turner Construction employee, said. “This project will benefit the community, make a statement about the students’ commitment and really help the shelter.” 
The shelter will be finished in mid-May, being built on land donated by Waste Management. To start, the shelter will house two horses the county took ownership of in January- but so far has had no real place to house them.
“Obviously, we can’t keep them here,” Laura Chavarria, director of WillCo Animal Control and Adoption Center, said. “And now since word got out we have had more and more calls coming in concerning horses who need our help.”
“We are just thankful that these kids are talented enough and chose us,” she said. “The shelter will be there for years and definitely benefit many animals.”
The students involved hail from five different county schools (Brentwood, Fairview, Franklin, Independence, Page and one student is homeschooled) and grade levels range from freshman to senior.
They are: Logan Costner, Elliot McClure, Christopher Cortez, Nicholas Hoffman, Matthew Yeomans, Eric Dunay, Jacob Hunter, Matthew Rutledge, Reid Solomon, Dylan Tan, Lillian Powell, David Ho, Jonathon Cole, Max Wilson and Claudia Santiago.
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