A Graduate Seminar In Construction

Abstract

At our University, with our graduate program in construction, we looked for a vehicle to accomplish certain goals. Our construction program is in a major metropolitan area with an extremely active construction market. We wanted to expose graduate students to the broad spectrum of this market ranging from residential and commercial through to heavy construction. In addition, we wanted students to gain insight into construction problems faced by firms in these markets. These insights might help students to focus on areas of exploration in completing thesis or project requirements for their particular degree study plan. Also, we wanted to expose students to research that involved our construction faculty members. A further goal was to encourage student presentations on their selected topics. In order to address these above concerns, it was decided to implement a graduate seminar in construction. This is a two-course one-credit (two total credits) sequence spread over two consecutive semesters. Currently, we are in the second year of offering this graduate seminar. The subject paper explores the relevant issues and problems in successfully conducting this seminar program. One advantage we had as a graduate program is that we could add the two credit requirement on top of the existing program without having to reduce credit numbers devoted to other topics. Hopefully the lessons learned from our experience will prove useful for other university programs in construction.