By Martin Paredes/south news editor
The South Campus National Association of Home Builders team won three national awards from the NAHB International Builders’ Show held Jan. 20-22 in Las Vegas.
The NAHB team of Nicholas Rex, Jennifer Weaver, Russell Miller and Hunter Reinhardt earned the championship trophy in the National Residential Construction Management Competition for a two-year college and third place in the Outstanding Student Chapters Award. Russell Miller was given the Outstanding Student award.
Orlando Bagcal, associate professor and team coach, feels the process as a whole is enriching for his students.
“The competition provides an opportunity for the students to showcase and demonstrate their learned knowledge and skills in the classroom,” he said. “Aside from the competition, the students also gain experience through activities such as focus group discussions, networking, career fair and attending education seminars.”
Jennifer Weaver, construction drawings specialist, reflected on her team.
“I didn’t know them very much when the project started, but I got to know them over time, and we each brought something specific to the table and helped each other,” she said.
Team captain Nicholas Rex also stressed teamwork.
“You’ve got four to five different people with different schedules, and we all have to come together and meet up to work on this one project,” Rex said. “It’s all done after or between classes. There’s a lot of emailing going back and forth. We had to adjust how we communicated and how we progressed with the project. There was a lot of working together as a team to do it, which is good.”
Rex talked improvement.
“Last year, we got second place, which was good,” he said. “We knew what we did wrong and what the judges wanted to see this year, and so we kind of stepped up our game this year.”
Weaver was keen on not letting success slow them.
“And even though this year we had some of the better scores, there’s still room for improvement for next year,” she said.
