Education Forum:
Modern Instruction Keeps Pace
with Modern Construction
“Twenty or 30 years ago, a student was expected
to earn a CE degree, and then go into the construction industry
and learn the job. Now we prepare them much more specifically for
a career in the construction industry.” We live in a country that values self-examination and advocates
self-help.
We wonder who moved our cheese, we count the steps it
takes to be a highly-successful person, and we do crunches and
Pilates, all in order to better our selves, our lives, our business
standing, or our finances.
Likewise, the arena of higher education is certainly not immune
to the tendency to subject itself to intense scrutiny and to make
changes and improvements. Specifically, education at the college
and university level in construction has changed over the last
few decades.
But unlike the sometimes fleeting and cursory facelift that a
fashionable book or trendy fad might cause in our society before
being replaced by the next fad, the deep and important alterations
that have settled in at universities across the United States seem
to be permanent and important.
Dr. William R. Burkett, the Construction Option Coordinator, teaches
Steel Structures, Concrete Structures, Masonry Structures, and
other support classes at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.
He sees evidence of important changes in the manner in which students
are educated today.
Dr. Burkett says that schools prepare students more fully than
in the past: “Twenty or 30 years ago, a student was expected
to earn a CE degree, and then go into the construction industry
and learn the job. Now we prepare them much more specifically for
a career in the construction industry.”
He elaborates on how Texas Tech students can prepare directly
for life after school; this preparation begins while they’re
still Red Raiders: “We have a requirement that places all
our students in an internship. Companies across Texas and farther
afield have embraced the program and welcome our students. The
students gain a tremendously valuable view into the working world
and see the pace of modern construction, and, honestly, the companies
win because they can evaluate a future builder for three months
and decide if they want to pursue him or her for employment after
graduation.”
And, again, this required internship reflects Texas Tech’s
decision, made a few years ago, to make a change that has ended
up preparing its construction students much more fully for life
after they receive their sheepskins. “We started requiring
an internship 6 or 7 years ago, and its effectiveness makes it
one of the best new procedures we have ever implemented.”
The Department Head of Civil Engineering at Purdue University,
Dr. Fred Mannering, sees advances as well in the manner in which
students are prepared and in their readiness to assume a role in
the profession. He believes that the United States is moving into
a boom time when builders will “hire every student that graduates
now; these young people have multiple job offers when they graduate;
the industry is hungry for these students, who, in turn, are eager
to start.”
One proof of that receptiveness is that when Purdue sets up a
career fair for future graduates, it’s common to welcome
60 construction companies onto campus to meet the students. Mannering
adds that “companies are very accommodating and will help
map out, as much as possible, what a young person’s career
might look like.”
And Mannering, like Burkett, believes that his own school has
become more fluid in its programs and responds well to the needs
of the market and the students that come to Purdue to learn. Students
at the West Lafayette campus can enroll in Civil Engineering, Construction
Engineering and Management, or Construction Technology, among other
tracks.
This movement toward early training of students to be ready for
work relies on a certain ability and desire inherent in the kids
coming to college. Burkett is encouraged at the excellence and
eagerness of the students themselves. He says, “The kids
come in, wanting to be builders. Even the ones who struggle with
the classroom aspect don’t give up. They want to build. They
want to have the ability to look at some structure in their town
and say, ‘I built that.’”
One student whose enthusiasm for construction reflects that mindset
is Matthew Para, whose work in Construction Management at California
Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo led him into an
internship with West Builders of Pasadena, California, where he
has spent the summer of 2005 working as a Project Engineer on a
high-end 100-Unit building condominium project in addition to a
private high school. His duties include taking part in the bid
review, contract awarding, and subcontractor coordination. While
Para remains active in university-wide committees of sustainability
and campus risk and safety, he enjoys “transforming an unused
piece of land into a place where people can work or live.”
Para’s motivation to build seems natural: apparently, a
wide range of influences lead students to the construction industry.
From Dads in the business to playing with Legos as a kid to an
overarching interest in shaping the communities in which they live,
many things can point the way when kids decide on a career path.
Para’s professors at San Luis Obispo, as well as like-minded
teachers such as Mannering and Burkett, would be pleased to hear
Para’s assessment of how college has helped prepare him for
a transition into the workplace: “It has increased my discipline
and sharpened my work habits, gave me insight into problem-solving,
greatly increased my verbal and written skills, and made me much
more well-rounded. Other classes – literature, philosophy,
and the sciences – have made me learn reasoning and the ability
to see things from many perspectives.”
It is impressive to watch a massive institution such as the collective
higher education community in construction make a discernible change
even while continuing to move forward. Like turning an aircraft
carrier, it takes some time and can be ponderous rather than precise.
But the evidence – as measured in well-prepared, well-educated
graduates committed to maintaining the industry’s high standard
and, maybe even raising it – seems strong that this change
is occurring, and succeeding.
Students in construction management, civil engineering, and other
construction-related fields are benefiting from these changes.
And that means that, ultimately, home-owners and businesses looking
to build a new office will benefit as well.
Both Professors Burkett and Mannering want their students to achieve
certain things by the time they leave school: technical competence,
of course. But also pride in the work they do and the things they
build as well as involvement and leadership in the community. Randy
Burkett takes great pleasure when a former student drops in a few
years after graduation and speaks with excitement about the work
he is doing.
Now, more than ever, those students leave Texas Tech and Purdue
and Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo (and dozens of other schools)
with real, not merely theoretical, knowledge of how things get
built in this country.
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