PCC, ECU Students Teaming Up for Seventh Straight Year

WINTERVILLE�Pitt Community College and East Carolina University students are working together this semester to develop an economical and ecologically-sustainable building design.

Led by PCC Architectural Technology Instructor Bill Hofler and Rebecca Sweet, associate professor with ECU�s Department of Interior Design and Merchandising, the project marks the seventh straight year students from the two schools have been asked to team up on a sustainable design.

This year�s collaboration began with a modified version of the national �Juicy Ideas Competition.� It was the first of three team-building exercises that will prepare the students for their final design project, the details of which have not yet been revealed.

The competition, which concluded Jan. 20, gave students from Pitt�s Architectural Technology and ECU�s Interior Design and Merchandising programs a week to find innovative uses for recyclable materials.

��Juicy Ideas� sprang from a national contest in which college students created videos of solutions for new uses of recycled goods,� Hofler said. �The national contest, unfortunately, does not run in the time frame needed for our collaboration, so we borrowed their idea and modified it to meet our needs.�

For the local �Juicy Ideas� project, Sweet said PCC and ECU students were placed in commingled groups of four or five. Each group, she said, randomly selected a recycled ingredient to work with, choosing from cardboard, aluminum cans/containers, and plastic bottles/containers.

The products produced through the competition were creative and, for the most part, varied.

Two teams created lamps�one out of aluminum cans, the other from plastic bottles�while another created a cardboard push cart. Another group weaved pieces of cardboard together to create a shade while another made a desk organizer out of plastic. The final team used aluminum cans and a coffee filter to create a water filtration unit.

Hofler said the purpose of �Juicy Ideas� was to make students aware of sustainability concepts and to help them begin to understand team dynamics by working with individuals from different educational disciplines.

�Empirical evidence has shown us just how important the team-building piece is to the success of the final projects,� Hofler said. �� By working with members of another discipline on short, quick-hitting projects, students have a chance to observe such things as temperament, work ethic, and personality type of potential project partners.�

In previous years, PCC and ECU students have developed designs for the N.C. Sustainable Building Design Competition. Last year, the collaboration took a somewhat different direction with students developing a building concept for the First People Heritage Center in Wayne County.