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Design Build > |
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About Design Build > |
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The 2005 Regional and National Competition Brochure is now available. Click here
to open the file -> Design Build
Contest
A broadband
connection is recommended to view this file due to it's size (2 MB).
The Middle
School Design Build Competition is currently in its fifth year of successful
operation through the Center for Construction Excellence (CCE) at the
University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), School of Interdisciplinary
Computing and Engineering (SICE).
The MSDB
competition is composed of two parts: The “train the teacher” component and
the actual competition. Additional help in the form of public relations,
training, and guest speakers will be provided to teaches who participate in
the competition. Transportation costs to the event, substitute teacher
costs, and 3 graduate credit hours will be provided to the teacher and
school district to encourage participation and defray costs to the schools.
Parent
volunteers who wish to receive college credit for participating are provided
the opportunity to apply for undergraduate class credit at a reduced price.
The actual
competition begins in January when the students are asked to work in teams
of 2-3 to design a commercial structure, draw it to scale, calculate its
area, create a cost estimate and bill of materials, build 3D model of the
structure to scale, impact the site’s topography, and write 5 reports on
various careers in construction. The students create a bar-code for their
projects from their classrooms and ship their projects to their local
community college, where teams of industry professionals (from presidents of
engineering firms, to sheet-metal workers) act as judges and award grand
prizes, first place prizes, and Best-In-School prizes. All students receive
a certificate or ribbon for participating.
During the
competition the students interact with practicing professionals from the
fields of manufacturing or construction. They talk to architects,
engineers, mathematicians, and trades people. The teachers spend the day
with other teachers and industry members developing future contacts between
the world of work and their classrooms.
Parents,
guidance-counselors, and principals are invited guests of industry during
the competition. For 2004, the Kansas and Missouri Governors and both the
KCKS and KCMO mayors will be participating.
This
project has shown tremendous success in the state of Missouri. From its
beginning it has grown from 64 students to 2500 students; from 1 teacher to
200 teachers; and from 1 state to 4 states. It has had 50% female
participation and 40% minority participation. It has been successfully
integrated into alternative classrooms and gifted classrooms. Behavior
disadvantaged students and severely handicapped students have successfully
used it. It was been used as a before school project, after-school project,
mainstream classroom project, boy scout, girl scout, 4-H, and agriculture
project. It has been used in urban and rural schools. This is the only
construction-management-based competition for middle school students that
unite the world of work with the mainstream math classroom.
G. Michael
Miller, CPE
Construction Technician
Kansas City Board of Public Utilities |
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