Teaching sustainability through service-learning in construction education

In Spring 2011, under the umbrella of a departmental initiative called CM Cares, faculty from Colorado State University collaborated with a local design professional and high school to offer an experimental service-learning course to engage at-risk teens within the local community through completion of a hands-on construction project, and to empower construction management university students to be leaders, stewards and mentors by managing a small community-based construction project. In the course, university students worked with local, alternative high school students in their building trades shop class to construct two full-scale sustainable dog houses for the Rocky Mountain Great Dane Rescue Mission. In its pilot offering, the course met with significant success and several participants received university awards. The purpose of this research is to present this course as a case study to examine successful strategies and barriers to implementing service-learning in construction education to teach sustainability. Assessment of such engagement was performed using reflections and informal interviews, pre- and post-course surveys, and concept maps. Findings suggest that this service-learning course has the potential to meaningfully engage both university and at-risk high school students and to increase their interest in, and knowledge of sustainability and community action.