Students from the Faculty of Applied Science help build a house for Habitat for Humanity.
This story was originally published on the on December 6, 2010. Community Service Learning and Community Based Research at UBC website.
By Chris Mallon
On September 23rd, we travelled to a Habitat for Humanity build site along with 14 other Mech 2 students and with Tom Huryn as our TA overseer. Habitat for Humanity is a worldwide organization that builds houses for families who are in difficult situations and who can’t afford to pay the full cost of a home. This particular project consisted of 16 single family homes, 5 of which are in progress and 5 which are to be built in the near future.
After a quick job site safety talk, we were put to work moving drywall and helping cut and install siding. Our tasks in themselves were not exciting; the exciting part was knowing that we were doing something that would have a beneficial impact on our community as a whole. At the end of the day, we were told by the head supervisor that the work done by our Mech 2 group had helped advance the project by 2 weeks due to our heavy-lifting and efficient task completion.
There is nothing an Engineer likes to hear more than being called efficient!
During the day, we had opportunities to apply our engineering skills, and interact with other engineering students in a non-educational environment. The real-life problem solving helped us improve our teamwork, leadership and communication skills. It was also beneficial to have one of our TAs from our academic courses working with us on the project. We got to know him better, which will make us more comfortable in approaching him at school.
In addition to working with our peers, we had to learn to follow given directions from a supervisor. We had to understand exactly what he wanted us to do, figure out as a team how we were going to do it, and report back when we were finished.
Recently, I have talked to some industry professionals about what they found was the most difficult in their transition from the academic world to the professional world. I found that the area they said they were lacking the most in was experience working with people. In school, we’re going to have so many opportunities to work on our technical skills that we need to embrace any opportunity to develop our soft skills.
At the start of our Mech2 year Dr. Pete asked us for qualities we wanted to develop throughout the year. Most of the responses were related to soft skills, as many of us realize that we are going to need more than technical skills to succeed in the professional world. The ability to communicate well and work in a collaborative team environment will also be critical.
Giving back to the community is not only the right thing to do, it provides us with a sense of self-worth that goes beyond just what we do as engineers. Programs like Habitat for Humanity are a perfect opportunity to do this. We would like to see CSL become a regular part of the Mech2 curriculum.
On October 23rd, 2010, Andrea Palmer and Amy Leson gave a presentation about their work with Habitat for Humanity, as part of the Mech 2 curriculum. This is a slightly exerpted version of their presentation. If you have any questions about CSL in Applied Sciences, please contact Alaya Boisvert.