Senior construction students have been working on their construction projects nearing graduation. Each year students come up with an idea of a project that will benefit the school or community.
“I believe these projects are very beneficial for us construction students, it allows us to get real world experience and be extremely hands on learning something new every single day..,” said Louis Rollins, senior in construction management. “…I also think it is a wonderful opportunity to be a part of something bigger than yourself and give back to this community we have been a part of during our college experience, another thing I am surprisingly grateful for is the opportunity to get to know some of my classmates while working beside them on a day to day basis.”
Currently, seniors are working on projects such as building a pavilion at Schlanger Park, as well as one at St. Mary’s-Colgan.
“For my personal preference, I decided on being a part of the Schlanger Park Pavilion project because I wanted to be a part of one of the projects that had to come in and actually build a project from the ground up..,” Rollins said. “…Another factor that went into deciding was the fact that we would be giving back to the community be building this structure for the city.”
Students get first-hand experience with the projects to understand how to do what they will be doing in their future careers.
“Based off of my experience over summer internships and growing up I kind of had a lot of experience on substructure type of projects..,” said Brody Caster, senior in construction management. “…The pavilion we are doing is a lot of concrete, a lot of dirt work, that’s something I felt comfortable doing in that area and since I knew I would be taking the role of project manager and having to be basically running the job, I thought I had the advantage doing it with something I had more experience in,”
This project has existed for twenty years where students build and update things for the school and community, to benefit themselves with hands-on work experience, as well as benefitting the places they choose to work with.
“It’s going pretty good, we actually just poured our slab yesterday and as far as my group and I’s responsibilities for this semester we’re almost done, we ran into some complications early on because of the weather and some unforeseen sight conditions but nothing we’re not used to or haven’t seen before,” Caster said.
Students were given a list of projects then they chose from those which ones they would want to be a part of. The projects are student run, so they are in charge of planning, preparing, and working on their sections of the projects how they want to do it.
“I think they’re great, me personally, I think it’s a great experience to get a feel for what it’s going to be like when I graduate and get out in the real world, there’s real world scenarios we’re hitting and having every day out there and I also think it’s a great way to give back to the community as well,” Caster said.