McWhorter School of Building Science

The Robins and modern construction. Field Lab is a two and a half acre site on campus that provides both a teaching facility, but also workshops and a base for us community service projects.

The classroom space is set up just the same that a construction job site office would be set up. The grounds of the field lab are similar to a construction site, so we have the opportunity to try and give the students exposure from all those different aspects of what a construction site would be like.

So survey camp is a rite of passage for students that enter into the professional program. They get to learn to work with one another and to work in larger teams.

And it's great because it teaches you more of the field logistics and that attention to detail that's going to help you be successful if you continue to think about that while you're in the field doing layout. But also, if you think about that the whole time you're doing any of your work, many of our students participate in a competition team. Competition teams are mentored by a building science faculty member and students on the teams work to solve construction problems and then present their solutions. Competition sponsors. The sponsors include construction companies and organizations from around the globe. All teams compete against teams from other construction schools, and historically, we place very well.

Our senior thesis project is the last thing that we do before we graduate, and it's really where all the skills that we've learned up till this point, come together. It's really awesome because you get to make your own company, design the model and rev it, price it out, create the schedule. You get to do everything that a full team would do, but on a much smaller scale, that is tradition, and that is history, and I believe that's one of the reasons why our students and our graduates are so well prepared when they go out into the industry.