John Reposa

In the department of industrial management, we have two options, a construction option and a manufacturing option – I teach in the construction management option. We have 177 students enrolled in the construction management program. In construction management, we move from the hands-on learning of the craft to being the managers. We teach them how to estimate and schedule. They do have internships and go out and work in the real world. What we try to do is teach them how to think.

What is the student demographic?

It’s not evenly divided, but we do have a substantial amount of women in our program. I would say probably about 15 percent are women.

Why is Salute participation important to you?

A couple of reasons. Since we’re a construction management program, for our teaching to be realistic, we have to work closely with the contractors. A lot of the people involved with Salute are on our advisory board. I go to every one of the Springfield Contractors Association’s and the Home Builders Association’s monthly meetings. Besides supporting our program, they’re hiring our students as interns. They’re giving out several thousand dollars worth of scholarships to our students, so I think it’s worthwhile. Plus, they help us on field trips (and) they come speak to our classes.

Why is that interaction important?

One big thing our advisory board wanted is a lot more interaction between the classroom and the industry. We try, in every one of our classes, to either have a field trip or have an outside person come and speak to that class. If it’s an estimating class, we’ll bring an estimator in (from a local company) to speak. … The number of field trips we have … I teach an equipment management course, and we go to Caterpillar … . Last year, we went to Conco’s concrete plant.

Is it becoming harder to bring people in to study construction and related fields?

Actually, it’s been getting easier. For the last two years, we have had 25 percent growth per year. We have a couple of things that are going for us. One of those is that (students) are all getting employed. They’re all getting fairly good pay, and so it’s a growth industry. And people like doing it. A lot of our students don’t go into engineering. It’s not because they’re not smart enough. They don’t want to sit in an office all day, and they don’t like doing just calculations. They like to be out there and involved in building (the project). We have been very fortunate – not just our program, but nationally – there’s a lot of demand for construction management students, because what we have is an older work force and a younger work force and nobody in the middle.

What are the issues facing construction educators?

What I see in the construction industry are some major issues we’re looking at. Before, it was all dollar-driven. It’s still dollar-driven, don’t get me wrong. But people aren’t just looking for the cheapest price. They’re looking for a quality product. The quality and the safety are very important, and those affect your bottom dollar amount. If you don’t produce a quality product and you don’t produce a safe product … you’re not going to get future work, or you’re going to get work that you’re not going to make a lot of money on.

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