Gianforte Family Academic Center Tours

The Student Government Association’s (SGA) Vice President of Academic Affairs, Marianna Fleming, reached out to students with an opportunity to tour the construction site of the Gianforte Family Academic Center (GFAC). Fleming is working with people from both within and outside the Stevens community to make this idea a reality. On the Stevens side, Professor Ellyn Lester from the Civil Engineering Department and Rober Maffia, Vice President for Facilities and Campus Operations helped and on the construction side, Senior Project Manager, Marcus Caamano from Group PMx, has been involved as well. “Caamano and Professor Lester are seasoned professionals who have been really communicative and wonderful to work with,” said Fleming.

The tours first sprung from a meeting Flemmig had with Dean Nilsen in discussing her new role in the SGA in combination with talking to the superintendent of the GFAC project. It was her own curiosity that lead to the creation of these tours. “The project site is challenging to tour because of how tiny it is, especially at this point because they are completing excavations and shoring.” It is challenges like this that made Fleming recognize that other students may be interested in touring the site as well.

Fleming hopes that this will help them in their future career, “I hope students are able to gain some insight into a project on their own campus and some real-life experience into how a project develops.” One of the major components of this project is that the students will get the opportunity to interact with important people involved in the project. This includes people who don’t regularly visit the site such as architects, engineers, and project managers. The frequency of the tours is depending on when these key players are around the site and have the time to talk with students, in addition to some other factors.

As of now, the tours haven’t started due to the poor weather conditions in recent weeks. However, the group of roughly 15 students that will be participating in the tours has already attended the first safety orientation session. For those who were unable to attend and still want to participate a second orientation will be held because more students expressed interest in touring the site. Fleming is aiming to hold an additional safety orientation at the beginning of the fall semester so incoming freshmen also have the opportunity to participate in the site tours. The majority of the students that have signed up are civil engineers, however, there are students from other majors that are interested in attending as well.