25th Anniversary of Renate Fruchter's Global Teamwork Class!

Teamwork across disciplines is an increasingly common concept in the building industry. But Renate Fruchter was years ahead of this trend.

In 1993, Fruchter, a lecturer and senior research engineer in civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, established the Project Based Learning Laboratory (PBL Lab) to develop and investigate project-based learning – an educational process whereby students gain knowledge and skills through long-term, real-world challenges – with an emphasis on multidisciplinary, remote teamwork.

As part of her lab’s mission, she also created a new course for civil and environmental engineering students called AEC Global Teamwork (CEE222), named for the architecture, structural engineering and construction students it would include. Mimicking the reality Fruchter foresaw, this project-based learning course required student teams, composed of different building disciplines, to produce professional-grade building designs – all while working remotely. The course was also a test bed for Fruchter’s research on and development of collaboration technologies, online learning practices and innovations in knowledge capture.

“Fruchter has always been ahead of her time,” said Josh Odelson MS ’06, an alumnus of AEC who is now a senior project manager with Power Construction. “Twenty-five years ago, she was doing what the industry has just come to adopt in the last 10 years – fostering ways to work collaboratively.”

Full article:

Launching the 25th generation of a cutting-edge global teamwork class at Stanford