academics

The Carver Community Center in Navasota, Texas, once the site of the town’s African-American high school, was the scene of “Navasota Neighborhood Day,” organized Nov. 23, 2013 by Master of Urban Planning students at Texas A&M University.

Planning professionals can learn the latest in hazard resilience measures from videos featuring presentations by hazard reduction and recovery experts from Texas A&M University. The online learning modules are offered by Planetizen, an information exchange urban planning website.

In an exercise mimicking real world construction industry scenarios, Texas A&M students presented building proposals for the university’s new Equine Center to representatives of Gamma Construction, the company currently building the facility.

Philip Berke ‘81, widely regarded as one of the nation’s top land use planning scholars, is returning to Texas A&M in 2014 to rejoin the urban planning faculty and help lead the university’s Institute for Sustainable Coastal Communities.

Texas A&M’s landscape architecture programs and its graduate architecture program were once again ranked among the best in the United States in an annual survey of professional practice leaders who have hired and supervised recent design graduates.

Texas A&M construction science students fanned out Nov. 1 to visit five construction-related businesses across the state were they viewed the latest construction, material production and manufacturing practices as part of their fall 2013 semester field day activities.

More than 2000 bicycle trips are taken each day in Texas A&M’s new bike share program, which debuted in the fall 2013 semester after an award-winning report by Master of Urban Planning Students showed a significant interest in bike sharing from students, faculty and staff.

Visitors interacted with art created by students at Texas A&M’s Department of Visualization in “PLAY inside the box,” an exhibit on display at in October at the Art Center of Brazos Valley.

Early career excellence in undergraduate teaching has netted Kunhee Choi, assistant professor of construction science, recognition as a Texas A&M Center for Teaching Excellence Montague Scholar.

A “bid room,” outfitted with state-of-the-art video conferencing equipment for simulating the preparation and negotiation of construction project cost proposals, will be built in Francis Hall, future campus headquarters of the Department of Construction Science, with help from a donation from Clark Construction Group LLC.

When construction science students begin taking classes in the renovated Francis Hall in spring 2015 they’ll be able to see exposed mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems at work in a $100,000 specialty lab funded by Dynamic Systems, Inc.

A remarkably diverse coalition including national science, arts and education groups assembled by Carol LaFayette, associate professor of visualization at Texas A&M, is advocating for the inclusion of the arts in science and technical education, an idea gaining traction among educators across the United States.

The signature classroom in the renovated Francis Hall, which will house Texas A&M’s Department of Construction Science this spring, will be named for Bob Segner, a professor who has been teaching students, many of whom are now leaders in the building industry, since 1970.

When Texas A&M construction science students move into their new Francis Hall headquarters next year, they're lessons will be enhanced by a new state-of-the-art audiovisual classroom made possible by a $150,000 combined gift from Balfour Beatty Construction and Robert Van Cleave ‘81, the company’s chairman and CEO.

Competition teams and students tackling group projects in the Department of Construction Science at Texas A&M will soon be collaborating in a state-of-the-art workspace made possible by a $150,000 gift from Vaughn Construction to the department's Francis Hall building campaign.