MSU students complete hands-on construction project
Freshmen in Mississippi State University’s building, construction technology program were able to get some hands-on experience over the academic year by building two tiny houses from the ground up.
The project spanned both semesters, and was set up as a studio course, meeting four hours three times a week. The students were divided into two teams, one building a wooden tiny house and one building a steel tiny house. The students were then divided into groups for respective jobs and
assigned upperclassmen foremen.
MSU College of Art, Architecture and Design Dean Jim West said the program tried to give students in the building construction technology practical hands-on experience through a project for many times before, but this is the first time the students have built tiny houses.
“What we try to do with the freshman students in construction science is give them a kind of broad-based experience in construction in the first year that is somewhat heavy in the area of hands-on work,” said West, who served as one of the project managers along with assistant clinical professor Lee Carson. “We’re not trying to make tradesfolks out of these students. We’re trying to give them a taste of some of the different trades that they will be working with as they move into management positions in construction companies.”
Jake Malmstrom, a freshman building construction technology student from Little Rock, Arkansas said the project had been eye-opening for him.
“Throughout the entire semester, pretty much everyone
had a hand in every single part of the process,” Malmstrom said. “We all got to learn each little part.”
Malmstrom said the most difficult part of the project was building the house to be removable, so the tiny house could be transported on roads.
“I had no idea even about the process of building a house at all, and now I feel like I could go onto a job site and kind of oversee what should be happening,” Malmstrom said.
West emphasized the importance of students getting handson experience early before going to more traditional coursework later in the program.
“We tried to use different materials on the houses, so that the students had a much broader range of things that they work in,” West said. “One of the houses has a cement fiberboard and wood exterior and wood framing, and the other house has all steel framing, and the outside has some tile and some metal, as well as some fiber cement board and some concrete.”
Both houses are designed to be taken apart for transportation, and West said the college hopes to sell them through a blind auction process once every component is complete. Students involved in the construction
of the houses were also required to keep a journal throughout the process.
“We thought the results were very good, from two standpoints,” West said. “One, at the end of the class, we did kind of an exit interview with every single student, talking about their involvement, what they had done, what they had learned, and each student also had to turn in a pretty significant document.”
The MSU building construction technology program is unique in its studio approach, teaching students in studio classes early on, and working closely with students in the college’s architecture program.
“Even when they get into third and forth year, and much of their work is inside and it’s research, doing more sophisticated estimates, schedules and safety plans, computer work, software packages and so forth, it still gives them that large block of time to work on a project where a faculty member is in there with them during that time, stopping the class, having discussions, those types of things, ” West said.
The building construction technology program began in 2007 and is part of the MSU College of Art, Architecture and Design.