Marlborough – Guillermo Vincentelli, a senior in the Precision Machining and Automated Manufacturing program at Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School, was recently named the Outstanding Vocational Technical Student at the school, and was honored at a dinner at Mechanics Hall in Worcester.
Vincentelli, from Marlborough, is the son of Francisco Vincentelli and Monique Solanilla. He chose to attend Assabet Valley primarily because he knew at a young age that he wanted to be a robotics engineer, and, in his words, “I saw the robots the students built, the machine shop and the electronics program, and they had me! My mother even called MIT to make sure they would accept a student from a technical school, and was pleased to hear they actually preferred students that already had a focus and some experience with engineering in a voc-tech high school, so it was a done deal!”
Vincentelli ranks second in his class of 231 students, and is an active member of the National Honor Society, FIRST Robotics, Math Club, and the volleyball team. He currently has a cooperative education job at the Saint-Gobain Research and Development Center in Northborough, working a minimum of 30 hours a week during the day every other week as he finishes his senior year. His employers say that his professionalism and love for mechanical engineering and machining are clearly evident from the praise from both customers and co-workers alike.
Looking forward to attending Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in the fall, Vincentelli also plans to come back as a mentor to the Assabet Valley FIRST robotics team.
The 26th Annual Outstanding Vocational Technical Student was hosted by the Massachusetts Association of Vocational Administrators, and featured several distinguished guest speakers. Lieutenant Governor Timothy P. Murray congratulated the fifty one students from across the state, adding that the vocational technical delivery system in Massachusetts is the best in the nation, citing the high MCAS scores and graduation rate and lowest dropout rates across the commonwealth. Secretary of Education Paul Reville and Commissioner of Education Mitchell Chester echoed those sentiments as they, too, congratulated the students, their parents, and the administrators and teachers gathered at the event.
