A group of professors from Stanford and UC-Berkeley teach the class, which is open to students at both schools. Each team consists of three graduate students, one each in engineering, construction management and architecture.
Undergraduates join the teams as apprentices.
Fruchter said that the core of the class is involved with trying to get students to think outside of their own disciplines and take an integrated approach to each problem. Fruchter said that her emphasis on cooperation comes in response to a real concern in the building industry. That means, for example, that architects need to think like engineers, and engineers need to understand a construction manager's concerns for projects to succeed. First-year structural engineering graduate student Gina Sandoval served as an undergraduate apprentice in the class last year. She liked the opportunity it afforded students to interact with people in the building industry, who served as mentors for the project teams.