Design class makes way for Segway
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Purdue senior Bob Graves
zips around a Chicago art gallery on a Segway vehicle. Senior
students in Landscape Architecture 416 incorporated the two-wheeler
into their service learning project, which was to develop plans
to revitalize a section of downtown Chicago.
Photo by Tom Campbell
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By Tom Campbell
Rebecca Growney had every reason to be nervous. The presentation she
was about to give, the one she had spent two weeks preparing, would
account for one-fourth of the 2,000-point grade in her Landscape Architecture
416 (urban design) class.
Each fall semester, seniors in the landscape architecture program are
presented with a service learning project in Chicago. This semester,
the students were asked to develop a plan to revitalize Chicago's Central
Michigan Avenue, a two-mile stretch of Chicago's most prime real estate
but a victim of urban decay over the past two decades.
Growney would have to impress not only the other 25 students in the
class, but also a jury of six critics who would question and critique
each presentation: a professional landscape architect, an architect,
a planner, an artist, a transportation engineer and course instructor
Kim Wilson.
Wilson puts the class members on different teams so they can evenly
share the large workload the class requires, but also to see how they
work as a team.
"This program is not just trying to build landscape architects,
but whole people," Wilson says. "It's important they learn
to work together with people who have strengths in different areas."
One of Growney's strengths is as a presenter, which may account for
her calm demeanor as she quietly prepared to deliver her 15-minute presentation.
Or perhaps she was calm because her mother, a Chicago resident, was
in the crowd, proudly watching. Or just maybe she was fearless because
the faces in the crowd represented friendships that began when these
students entered Purdue's prestigious horticulture and landscape architecture
program five years ago.
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