Guest Blog by Greg Jacobson of Wells Concrete
The PCI studio at MSU is called "building a concrete future". During the first semester, it has garnered a lot of interest from the students and staff. I believe is going to be a big hit as it begins to evolve. Wells Concrete invited the nine students from the prestress design course to visit our plant.
When a total 15 students asked attend due to the interest from students not in the class, we suggested a tour of some of our job sites. The job tour had enough enterest that we loaded up many students and staff from the civil engineering and construction management programs to see the plant and jobsites. We made it an all day tour and visited three sites and answered a lot of questions.
My mission was to introduce a few students to prestressed concrete and show them what one can do... I guarantee you that when that bus got back last Thursday night every student had an idea what prestressed concrete is all about!
The students from MSU are part of the current PCI Foundation project that began during the fall 2014 semester. The program is lead by Dr. Farhad Reza of the Civil Engineering school and Dr. Mohamed F. Diab of the Construction Management school. This program is the first joint program for engineering and construction management students sponsored by the PCI Foundation. Local partners include Wells Concrete and PCI Midwest.
Mission accomplished! We are having fun!