Bowers Program integrates majors for real world learning experiences

By KATE DAILEY
Collegian Staff Writer

Most courses try to prepare students for life after college. One class at Penn State is going a step further by taking students out of the classroom and putting them into the real world.

The class, an extension of Architecture 441, is called the Bowers Program Studio. The Raymond A. Bowers Program for Excellence in Design and Construction of the Built Environment funds the class.

It allows students from three disciplines -- architecture, architectural engineering and landscape architecture -- to work together in teams on a semester-long project.

At the end of the semester, each team presents its design to government zoning officials in Pittsburgh.

Before this endowment, students in the three disciplines rarely worked together, said Douglas Hoffman, assistant professor of architecture.

Hoffman taught the class last semester and will do so again this semester when students will work on designs for a historic residential area in Pittsburgh.

Although students often take courses outside of their discipline, he said, they don't usually work with students from other majors.

"This is the only course I'm aware of that crosses that bridge and puts them together in the same studio," Hoffman said.

Students need experience collaborating with each other, he said, because in the workforce, they will be required to work as a team to get the job done.

The same was true in the class, and students quickly learned to work together.

"It wasn't hard," Mari Bendinsky (senior-landscape architecture) said.

"It was more learning than working because you had to work with them to get the project done."

The goal of last semester's class was to design a residential living area in Pittsburgh's Strip District and then present the plans to city officials at a zoning hearing.

Students were divided into groups of four, usually consisting of two architects, one architectural engineer and a landscape architect.

Throughout the course of the class, the students took numerous trips to Pittsburgh to examine the Strip, meet with city officials and work with members of the Community Design Center to lean about the politics and parameters of their project.

"I learned so much," Doug Stingelin (senior-architectural engineering) said of the program.

"Besides learning about architecture and the related fields, I learned about communication."

By the end of the semester, students had a collection of work similar to that of working architects.

Furthermore, they all successfully had worked together to create professional results, Hoffman said.

"The quality of the projects was excellent, the quality of the collaboration superior," he said.

"I was really impressed with how well they worked together."