Trident Construction Offers Hands-on Teaching for The Citadel’s Construction Engineering Students

Construction Engineering students at The Citadel are getting a rare glimpse at how things operate on a real job site. The Materials and Methods class taught by Dr. Rebekah Burke, PE, LEED AP BD+C, mostly learn in the classroom, but thanks to Trident Construction, the students are seeing how concrete foundations are poured and rebar is installed at the new Poinsette Senior Center site off the Crosstown.

Matt Robbins is a Project Executive with Trident, and also a member of the Advisory Board for The Citadel’s Construction Engineering Department. “It’s very important that these students are able to see how this complicated work gets done,” says Robbins. “We want them to learn as much as possible now so they are well qualified when they graduate and get jobs in this industry.”

Their professor, Dr. Burke agrees, “The students need to be able to put their classroom learning together with what’s going on in real life. If this is what they want to do, they have to get out here and learn on site.”

The Construction and Engineering program is relatively new at The Citadel; in fact, their first graduates will be the Class of 2020. Rebekah Earhart is currently a junior in the program. She loves the on-site learning. “Seeing all this in person makes it click differently than just seeing photos online.” Rebekah hopes to be an engineer in the Army and is excited The Citadel is offering this kind of instruction.

Trident has set up several more in-person site visits for the cadets, each teaching a different part of construction and engineering including steel framing and high-end interiors.