Introduction
A Milestone Year
In the fall of 1997, our program served its first few students, a program founded by industry to serve its employees as a degree completion program. With the spring commencement, we graduated our 25th class, while also celebrating our first graduates. Truly a proud milestone moment!
Upon the laurels we do not rest, though. Twenty five years also brings about evaluation of our program: Are we staying with industry? Are we relevant to that industry, providing solid graduates that can replace our aging workforce? Are our alumni engaged and leading in their fields, as we always hope? Those are the questions we asked ourselves this year, a year that will be marked by change for the better. Change, and adaptation to changing conditions, is a necessary task. We have identified the following specific goals reflecting this change:
- Strengthen our Estimating core, three credits to four
- Strengthen our Planning/Scheduling core, three credits to four, incorporating LEAN principles
- Incorporating Innovative Contracting principles into our Contracts core
- Create options for the Safety requirement to include principles of healthy and safe buildings for those students not needing an OSHA 30 certification
- Develop a minor and Certificate program in Real Estate Development
- Continue to develop our robust outcomes assessments as we transition to new data capturing software at the University level
- Integrate our DEI outcomes across the curriculum with new DEI guidance within the College from Dr. Shari Robinson
- Increase our Alumni engagement under the leadership of Aislinn Hernandez Keane
- Continue to seek financial scholarship support from our industry partners.
And perhaps the biggest change is the transition to a new dean for the College of Continuing and Professional Studies. I was proud to serve on the national search committee, where we selected Dr. Radhika Seshan into our fold. With extensive experience in continuing and global education initiatives, she was most recently dean of San Diego State University Global Campus. As this report goes to press, Dr. Seshan will be finding her away around our College, learning everything she can as we anticipate good positive change with her leadership.
So how did we do with students this past year? In the spring, we graduated 29 students. We continue to be proud of the diversity of our student body, which is high relative to the national averages in peer institutions. Currently 32% of Construction Management students are students of color, American Indian, Asian, Black, or Hispanic. Across the program, 31% of the students are female, including 18% of those pursuing the major, 74% of those pursuing the minor, and 23% of those pursuing the certificate.
In January 2024, the tenth Pura Vida Study Abroad program in Costa Rica gathered 12 students in another truly interdisciplinary program doing a complete facility and business evaluation for AGECO in San Jose, an organization that caters to senior citizens and their integration into society. As usual, the proposal—in Spanish, in colones (currency) and in metric—was completed in two weeks! I am proud to lead these students to do such meaningful work, so quickly and so professionally.
As always, we could not have made 25 years of program graduates without the dedication and commitment of our long and proud serving faculty and staff. I thank you!
This Annual Report presents an overview of our students, alumni, faculty and staff, curricula, career development, Advisory Board, and scholarship and development; the accomplishments of our programs and their quality initiatives; and our annual plan. This represents who we are, though it is important to remember our mission statement, unchanged for this 25-year event:
Preparing future construction leaders to sustainably manage the built environment.
A. Peter Hilger, AIA
Faculty Director, Construction Management Program