July 24, 2006
From labor to management | The University of Southern Maine launches a construction management program for experienced workers looking to move up the ladder
By Chris Churchill
Construction is a hot, job-rich field. (According to the Associated Constructors of Maine, the state's construction employment over the past decade has risen by 10,000 workers to its current level of 31,000.) But for lower-level workers, acquiring the skills needed to move from the hard-labor sector of the construction workforce to the management level isn't always easy. The University of Southern Maine, however, hopes to change that.
Beginning this fall, the Gorham-based school will begin offering a degree program in construction management, aimed at those who already possess substantial construction skills but want to move into administration work that takes less of a physical toll.
It will be the second construction management degree available in the state ˆ the University of Maine began offering such a program in 1989 ˆ although Fred Walker, chair of the USM Department of Technology, which will administer the program and is part of the School of Applied Science, Engineering and Technology, says there are major differences in what the schools provide to construction management students. Mainebiz recently talked with Walker, an Arizona native who has taught at USM for 11 years and has chaired the technology department for four years, about the school's new offering; an edited transcript follows.
Mainebiz: Explain how the USM construction management program came into existence.
Walker: We are in the business of responding to community needs. That's part of the mission of the University of Southern Maine. That means we try to survey needs and trends in industry, and one of the top 10 growing career fields is construction. When you survey what is available in Maine to support the construction industry, you have construction technology programs in each of the two-year schools. Then there's really nothing else available for people in the lower half of the state that are interested in construction.
In terms of responding to needs, we've got a thriving industry here with a lot of people coming out of two-year schools. Without the opportunity for a bachelor's degree, they are going to be relegated to essentially a life of skilled labor. And the construction industry, particularly in Maine, can be hard on your body. By the time you get into your early 30s, you need to start thinking about what you can do to move into a management position or another career.
So this program is largely for older students?
Absolutely. The community college system in Maine has been putting out roughly 100 to 150 people a year [with construction-related degrees]. You have all these people who have graduated, and now have years and years of work experience. We at USM do not want to enter into the competitive arena where we offer the same things that are available at other colleges in Maine. Admission to our program is largely predicated on having a two-year degree in construction technology or having a state certified journeyman's license to practice some specific trade in the state of Maine. We're not going to offer the first two years. You're going to have to have that skill set coming in.
That makes it a wonderful winning situation for the state of Maine, because now we don't have to pay for a lab and all the equipment and start duplicating what's available elsewhere.
How is this program different than the University of Maine program?
It's significantly different. In the state of Maine, the only way to get a program approved by the [UMaine] Board of Trustees is to make sure it's not a duplicate program. The issue with the University of Maine program is that it's a civil engineering program. That automatically means that all the coursework is grounded in calculus. For the people who are in the two-year technology programs coming out of community colleges, those courses aren't transferable into that program, for the most part. Those people are not calculus based. You go to a community college to learn a trade and go to work right away. And calculus is not part of the language of the construction technology person.
Is this a program that the industry was asking for?
We have had a lot of approach from industry. We are always interacting with our industrial partners to ask: Are the graduates we're putting out qualified? Are they meeting your needs? Is there some area that we need to expand into to better meet [those] needs? Our administration was getting feelers from industry, which was saying, "What are you guys doing for construction?" So that prompted us to do a little bit more homework to see if this would fit for Maine.
How long was the approval and planning process for the program?
Academics you can consider a boat at sea, and it takes a long time to turn that boat. This has been three years plus. If you've got a perfect alignment ˆ funding and faculty available and everything ˆ it's a minimum of two years to get a program approved.
Will you hire additional faculty for this program?
We're going to begin this program based on the faculty that we have. We have just enough capacity in terms of available seats in classes to offer this thing and get it started. Once we get more than 20 full-time students in the program, then we've got a commitment from our administration that they'll hire a full-time faculty member.
When you look at how these programs begin on a national level, they almost always start under an existing industrial technology program. But as these programs grow ˆ and they tend to grow quite rapidly ˆ then they have to have their own courses tailored to the construction management field. It kind of grows to become its own thing.
How many students do you expect to have in the first semester?
We've got about 10 right now who have paid their fees and are going to start. For us it was a nice arrangement, because we're only going to have to offer five new classes to get this thing started. We already have the rest of the curricula in place, because we offer it for preparation of industrial professionals.
When you look at the accreditation agency that we're currently under, and when you look at the accreditation agency that would just work on specific programs in construction, the curricula are lined up already. So we're not going to have any problems with accreditation.
What courses will the students be taking?
The new program is going to largely emphasize computational and leadership skills. We're not trying to prepare civil engineers. What we're trying to do is prepare the site coordinator, the site superintendent, the project scheduler and the project manager for construction organizations. So they're going to take two courses in project management and two courses in construction documents, which is essentially how to read plans and how to negotiate contracts. They'll be some accounting that's involved. That set of courses will prepare people to interface with a lot of different communities that a construction manager is going to have to deal with. You have to deal with trades people, you have to deal with banks and financing, you have to deal with attorneys. It will give them a good grounding.
It's assumed these graduates will be highly employable?
We have had a number of meetings and summits and focus groups with the community colleges and in every single case they say, "We don't have a problem with preparing well-trained graduates. We have a problem with our industrial sponsors coming here and luring our students away before they complete the program." So virtually every single person who graduates from the two-year program in the state has a job immediately.
But anybody who wants a job in construction can get employment in construction. Anybody who has additional saleable skills can climb into the construction industry at a higher point in the food chain. There's nothing around here that prepares people to do this. We've had people in here from [Pittsfield-based] Cianbro and other large companies, and what they say is "We can get laborers. We have to work at it, but we can get laborers. What we can't get is anybody who has anything to do with critical thinking."
How big do you envision this program growing? How many students will it eventually have?
I talk about something called catastrophic success. What happens if you offer this degree program and all of a sudden you have 250 people lined up at the door? We don't have the capacity to deal with that. So in terms of controlled growth, for the first two years I've got an agreement with my faculty to allow and absorb 20 students per year. And after we get to that 20 the first year and in the second year if we have 20 more, then we can go out and hire a full-time faculty member. We can bring this person in and say, "You're going to make your life supporting the construction program."
But taking more than 20 students a year into this program is probably not realistic for Maine. Most of the graduates from the two-year programs are going to have the desire to go out into industry and start making a paycheck and building a career. So you have a much smaller percentage that want to continue from the two-year program to the four-year program. What you cannot gauge is the graduates from 20 or 25 years ago that are at the tail end of their laborer career. How many of those kind of people are going to knock on the door?
Are you going to market the program?
Well, we're doing things like this interview. We're having advertisements placed in the Portland Press Herald. We're starting to imbed this in the college catalogue which will come out next year. But this is part of the big-ship-at-sea thing. It takes a long time to get all the systems aligned so you're singing the same song and the same message.
Are there corporate sponsors for the program?
We have an advisory board, and we convened such a board specifically to launch this program. Everyone on the board has agreed to serve for two years, and we have all sorts of skill sets represented. We've got attorneys, civil engineers, architects, residential and light commercial construction companies.
What we're not interested in doing with this program is narrowing the focus of it to the point that it becomes unattractive for the masses. We're not trying to prepare people to deal with heavy construction, with roads and bridges and that type of thing. We want to provide the person who can go from upper-end residential construction application to light commercial. And when you take a look around here there's just thousands and thousands of jobs in those fields at any given time. They're going to need those kinds of people, and they'll continue to need those kinds of people.
Beginning this fall, the Gorham-based school will begin offering a degree program in construction management, aimed at those who already possess substantial construction skills but want to move into administration work that takes less of a physical toll.
It will be the second construction management degree available in the state ˆ the University of Maine began offering such a program in 1989 ˆ although Fred Walker, chair of the USM Department of Technology, which will administer the program and is part of the School of Applied Science, Engineering and Technology, says there are major differences in what the schools provide to construction management students. Mainebiz recently talked with Walker, an Arizona native who has taught at USM for 11 years and has chaired the technology department for four years, about the school's new offering; an edited transcript follows.
Mainebiz: Explain how the USM construction management program came into existence.
Walker: We are in the business of responding to community needs. That's part of the mission of the University of Southern Maine. That means we try to survey needs and trends in industry, and one of the top 10 growing career fields is construction. When you survey what is available in Maine to support the construction industry, you have construction technology programs in each of the two-year schools. Then there's really nothing else available for people in the lower half of the state that are interested in construction.
In terms of responding to needs, we've got a thriving industry here with a lot of people coming out of two-year schools. Without the opportunity for a bachelor's degree, they are going to be relegated to essentially a life of skilled labor. And the construction industry, particularly in Maine, can be hard on your body. By the time you get into your early 30s, you need to start thinking about what you can do to move into a management position or another career.
So this program is largely for older students?
Absolutely. The community college system in Maine has been putting out roughly 100 to 150 people a year [with construction-related degrees]. You have all these people who have graduated, and now have years and years of work experience. We at USM do not want to enter into the competitive arena where we offer the same things that are available at other colleges in Maine. Admission to our program is largely predicated on having a two-year degree in construction technology or having a state certified journeyman's license to practice some specific trade in the state of Maine. We're not going to offer the first two years. You're going to have to have that skill set coming in.
That makes it a wonderful winning situation for the state of Maine, because now we don't have to pay for a lab and all the equipment and start duplicating what's available elsewhere.
How is this program different than the University of Maine program?
It's significantly different. In the state of Maine, the only way to get a program approved by the [UMaine] Board of Trustees is to make sure it's not a duplicate program. The issue with the University of Maine program is that it's a civil engineering program. That automatically means that all the coursework is grounded in calculus. For the people who are in the two-year technology programs coming out of community colleges, those courses aren't transferable into that program, for the most part. Those people are not calculus based. You go to a community college to learn a trade and go to work right away. And calculus is not part of the language of the construction technology person.
Is this a program that the industry was asking for?
We have had a lot of approach from industry. We are always interacting with our industrial partners to ask: Are the graduates we're putting out qualified? Are they meeting your needs? Is there some area that we need to expand into to better meet [those] needs? Our administration was getting feelers from industry, which was saying, "What are you guys doing for construction?" So that prompted us to do a little bit more homework to see if this would fit for Maine.
How long was the approval and planning process for the program?
Academics you can consider a boat at sea, and it takes a long time to turn that boat. This has been three years plus. If you've got a perfect alignment ˆ funding and faculty available and everything ˆ it's a minimum of two years to get a program approved.
Will you hire additional faculty for this program?
We're going to begin this program based on the faculty that we have. We have just enough capacity in terms of available seats in classes to offer this thing and get it started. Once we get more than 20 full-time students in the program, then we've got a commitment from our administration that they'll hire a full-time faculty member.
When you look at how these programs begin on a national level, they almost always start under an existing industrial technology program. But as these programs grow ˆ and they tend to grow quite rapidly ˆ then they have to have their own courses tailored to the construction management field. It kind of grows to become its own thing.
How many students do you expect to have in the first semester?
We've got about 10 right now who have paid their fees and are going to start. For us it was a nice arrangement, because we're only going to have to offer five new classes to get this thing started. We already have the rest of the curricula in place, because we offer it for preparation of industrial professionals.
When you look at the accreditation agency that we're currently under, and when you look at the accreditation agency that would just work on specific programs in construction, the curricula are lined up already. So we're not going to have any problems with accreditation.
What courses will the students be taking?
The new program is going to largely emphasize computational and leadership skills. We're not trying to prepare civil engineers. What we're trying to do is prepare the site coordinator, the site superintendent, the project scheduler and the project manager for construction organizations. So they're going to take two courses in project management and two courses in construction documents, which is essentially how to read plans and how to negotiate contracts. They'll be some accounting that's involved. That set of courses will prepare people to interface with a lot of different communities that a construction manager is going to have to deal with. You have to deal with trades people, you have to deal with banks and financing, you have to deal with attorneys. It will give them a good grounding.
It's assumed these graduates will be highly employable?
We have had a number of meetings and summits and focus groups with the community colleges and in every single case they say, "We don't have a problem with preparing well-trained graduates. We have a problem with our industrial sponsors coming here and luring our students away before they complete the program." So virtually every single person who graduates from the two-year program in the state has a job immediately.
But anybody who wants a job in construction can get employment in construction. Anybody who has additional saleable skills can climb into the construction industry at a higher point in the food chain. There's nothing around here that prepares people to do this. We've had people in here from [Pittsfield-based] Cianbro and other large companies, and what they say is "We can get laborers. We have to work at it, but we can get laborers. What we can't get is anybody who has anything to do with critical thinking."
How big do you envision this program growing? How many students will it eventually have?
I talk about something called catastrophic success. What happens if you offer this degree program and all of a sudden you have 250 people lined up at the door? We don't have the capacity to deal with that. So in terms of controlled growth, for the first two years I've got an agreement with my faculty to allow and absorb 20 students per year. And after we get to that 20 the first year and in the second year if we have 20 more, then we can go out and hire a full-time faculty member. We can bring this person in and say, "You're going to make your life supporting the construction program."
But taking more than 20 students a year into this program is probably not realistic for Maine. Most of the graduates from the two-year programs are going to have the desire to go out into industry and start making a paycheck and building a career. So you have a much smaller percentage that want to continue from the two-year program to the four-year program. What you cannot gauge is the graduates from 20 or 25 years ago that are at the tail end of their laborer career. How many of those kind of people are going to knock on the door?
Are you going to market the program?
Well, we're doing things like this interview. We're having advertisements placed in the Portland Press Herald. We're starting to imbed this in the college catalogue which will come out next year. But this is part of the big-ship-at-sea thing. It takes a long time to get all the systems aligned so you're singing the same song and the same message.
Are there corporate sponsors for the program?
We have an advisory board, and we convened such a board specifically to launch this program. Everyone on the board has agreed to serve for two years, and we have all sorts of skill sets represented. We've got attorneys, civil engineers, architects, residential and light commercial construction companies.
What we're not interested in doing with this program is narrowing the focus of it to the point that it becomes unattractive for the masses. We're not trying to prepare people to deal with heavy construction, with roads and bridges and that type of thing. We want to provide the person who can go from upper-end residential construction application to light commercial. And when you take a look around here there's just thousands and thousands of jobs in those fields at any given time. They're going to need those kinds of people, and they'll continue to need those kinds of people.
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