The interior design classes’ client, Zenoss, will visit Vandegrift to see students presentations of original floor plans on Oct. 6.

Earlier this month the interior design class travelled to Zenoss’ current building to hear about the businesses idea of letting students in the class design a new office floor plan for them. Zenoss will pick one student’s blueprints to use.

“They are happy to have us because they know Vandegrift and they know our students are high performers,” interior design teacher Jodi Jacobsen said. “The company itself really enjoys working with the community.”

The students will be graded on their work and effort put into the project during class time. Jacobsen knows her students have high expectations and has provided a rubric for them to follow.  

“We were given basics and basically told to run with it,” senior Mackenzie Shaw said. “It’s exciting because this is an actual kind of job, an internship. We get the chance to design something that may become real.”

Four of the students in the class have participated in the FCCLA STARR event previously, helping them perform under high pressures and managing time.

“They know the subject and the design language and are pretty confident designers,” Jacobsen said. “They also understand the amount of work it takes to put into a product.”

Senior Dahyeok Jang said this project will help with college recognition and for future jobs.

“I want to go to college to be an architect major and our school currently doesn’t offer one of those classes so to find an interior design course was really cool,” Dahyeok said.

Students will have the opportunity to work on the project in class rather than outside of school.

“Ms. Jacobsen is great and gives us a lot of time in class,” Shaw said. “You have to really work at it for the presentation. It’s stressful but also like a friendly competition for all of us.”

Zenoss is an Austin software IT company located in the Four Points Community. They hope that having students help design their new sales department building will inspire other companies to do the same.

“If you ‘won’ this kind of thing it will be fun to get to say you did this at such a young age,” Shaw said. “It’s not just some school project, you are actually making something.”