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Monday, 02 March 2015 08:58

Real World Connections for Civil Engineering Students Featured

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Nurture the Creative Mind (NCM), a local non-profit organization, has partnered with Mr. Chris Davidson's Project Lead the Way/ Civil Engineering and Architecture (CEA) students at the Weber Innovation Center to help design the next phase of a community outdoor space on 35th Street and Washington Blvd. in Ogden. This space will have, among other things, a greenhouse, garden space, gazebo and shed. The space is going to be 100% designed by students. Amir Jackson, director of NCM, presented this opportunity to Mr. Chris Davidson's PLTW/ CEA class. His students are now going to develop several design concepts in Revit (a CAD software) and present them to the Ogden City Planner and a group of local architects for review. 

This project meets multiple CEA learning standards and objectives, including:

  • Identify building codes
  • Occupancy codes / building materials
  • Commercial wall design
  • Commercial low-slope roof design
  • Property drainage
  • Surveying
  • Soil testing


Mr. Davidson said "It gives my students some real investment in this class. This service-learning project is exactly what I envisioned doing with CEA when I first started teaching it. My hope is to try to partner with some sort of non-profit with this type of need each semester. A tall order, but something I want to try. Below is a sketch of the lot that will be developed. The other pictures are from a field trip to the site where we did some surveying and brainstorming about the layout of the space and looked at architectural styles on 25th street."

Amir Jackson said that the non-profit's mission is to: "Empower youth through an active, positive, and proactive investment using the tools of creativity, education and character development."

These students will be taking conceptual designs from other NCM students and using those designs along with theirs to create an actual blueprint. They will then present their designs to the Carbon Architectural Firm for feedback.

We compliment Mr. Davidson on his vision and energy to bring real world applications to his classroom!

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