Shawsheen Students a Big Hit at Portfolio Day

(Editor's note: The following information was submitted by the administration of Shawsheen Tech.)

Seven Shawsheen Valley Technical High School seniors in the design and visual shop recently participated in a worthwhile trip to Boston’s Hynes Auditorium along with instructor Wendy Siegal-Botti.

The group attended National Portfolio Day, hosted by the Museum of Fine Arts, which invited high school students to show off their portfolios to more than 60 colleges from all over the country.

Siegal-Botti said Shawsheen’s students were well received by the colleges that were recruiting that day.

“They showed their work and one of our students was accepted to two colleges on the spot and another was accepted to a college in California that day,” Siegal-Botti said. “It’s a great event. The students have a chance to see schools that they’d never get to see otherwise.”

The seniors that visited Portfolio Day included Victoria Comeau of Wilmington, Allison MacDonald, Adam Race and Moriah Rodriguez of Billerica and Elizabeth Brick, Keagan Mahoney and Robbie Maiuri of Tewksbury.

“It was really cool,” said Race, whose work impressed the California College of the Arts so much that they offered him a spot in the school next fall. “They were the first college that I ever talked to.”

Race originally attended Shawsheen Tech to study culinary arts, but fell in love with art during his freshman year and is now an avid photographer.

His portfolio had an assortment of digital photos and sketches.

Comeau is also studying photography and her portfolio impressed representatives from both the New Hampshire Institute of Art and the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.

“It was exciting,” said Comeau, who hopes to be a wedding photographer some day. “The colleges gave a lot of feedback.”

Siegal-Botti said Portfolio Day was valuable for many reasons.

“It was a real eye-opening experience for the students,” she said. “This was the first time our students’ portfolios were accepted on the spot and I think that’s a real reflection on the work of these students and the job we do at Shawsheen Tech.”

Siegal-Botti said that 24 of last year’s 25 seniors in design and visual are now in college or an art school.

“We have a 98 percent placement into college,” she said. “And they come out of college with high-paying positions. Our program is so comprehensive. It has really grown and evolved.”

Siegal-Botti isn’t surprised that her students were so well received by the colleges that attended Portfolio Day.

“Their ideas are phenomenal,” she said. “It’s a pleasure to watch them. I can’t tell you how proud I am of them.”