Theory to practice

There’s no better education than learning on the job. A class of 12 fourth-year students in the Architecture School is doing just that, working to provide Charlottesville officials with data that will help them understand the city’s housing woes. The students are essentially doing what they have been studying for years now, and in the process they are providing a service to the community. This approach should be adopted by more classes in all of the University’s undergraduate schools.

The class project arose as a response to student requests, professor Nisha Botchwey said. Students in the urban and environmental planning department asked how they could apply their skills to the current housing situation in Charlottesville.

It is not unusual for student projects in the Architecture School to deal with real issues. “That’s the norm for planning courses,” Botchwey said, adding that in her time at the University she has organized projects working in tandem with a number of local non-profit organizations.

The benefits of this type of learning are obvious. Rather than dealing purely in theory or creating artificial problems to solve, students can get real-world experience while learning. If they are doing the work anyway, why not do something useful?

The issue of collaboration among instructors and outside entities, even non-profit organizations, does raise some ethical questions. If professors are not careful, they could easily end up using their students as free labor for the organizations with which they are working. The housing project does not seem to have done this, as the information gleaned from the project will be useful to a large number of people, not just the Piedmont Housing Alliance, with which Botchwey worked to shape the project’s goals.

Fourth-year planning students always do a project similar to this one, Botchwey said. Projects that focus on applying skills to Charlottesville are too rare in other schools, however. Professors in all disciplines should think about how their classes could extend outside of the classroom and produce real, useful research.

Students can make this happen themselves. Projects for which students get to choose the topic offer an opportunity for students to focus on local issues and accomplish something beyond a good grade. Students should be encouraged to conduct thesis research on problems their efforts can help solve.

Student Council’s Student-Initiated Courses offers one opportunity for undergraduate students interested in a real-world issue to address it with professor help. With several student organizations dedicated to social issues on Grounds and in Charlottesville, students clearly have the drive to work on real problems outside the classroom; professors should work with them in order to, as Botchwey put it, “bridge theory to practice.”