Global Leaders students visit Turkey, Romania

 

Four GLCM students at the Blue Mosque: (left to right) Liz Tewolde, Zorina Disheva, Ana Lucuta, Amna Mahmud.

Twelve students in the Global Leaders in Construction Management (GLCM) program traveled to Turkey and Romania over winter break to tour construction projects and learn about the practice of engineering in the countries. An international trip is an essential feature of the master’s degree program, which prepares students to work in the increasingly global construction management industry.

“There’s an absolute construction boom in Turkey right now,” said Brent Young, Director of the GLCM program, who planned and supervised the trip.  “They’re building speculative high-rise projects. They’re investing in their infrastructure. They have doubled their per capita income in the last eight years. There’s huge growth.”

The GLCM program is a master’s degree program which students begin during their final undergraduate year in the department. The “four pillars” of the program, Young said, are course work, independent study, an internship and travel. There is one international trip and one domestic trip each year during winter and spring breaks, so students travel four times during their participation in the program. Past international destinations have included Australia, China, Panama, Dubai and Canada.

The trip took students to 13 construction sites over seven days, including the Izmit Bay Suspension Bridge project, which is the largest Build-Operate-Transfer project in Turkey. When the bridge is complete, it will be the second-longest suspension bridge in Europe and the fourth longest in the world.

“We visited a diverse range of projects including mixed-use developments, tunnels, a suspension bridge and several mass excavations,” Young said.

Other visits included the Bomonti Tourism Center, the Akasya Mixed Use development, the Marmaray Tunnel, the New Istanbul Development, the Zorlu Mixed-Use Project and Office Tower, the Emre Arolat Architects office, the Krystal Kule project, Bucharest Subway Expansion, Promenada Mall, Exxon Mobil offices and the Romanian National Theater restoration. The projects varied in size and offered students a window into the cultural differences of practicing engineering in Turkey and Romania.

The GLCM program is in its eighth year; the class of 2013 will be its seventh graduating class. There are 35 alumni, about a dozen of whom currently work overseas, Young said. The next trip will be to New York City during spring break 2013. Next winter, GLCM students will travel to Rio de Janeiro.

More information about the Turkey trip, including a blog detailing the site visits, is available on the GLCM website.

Students pose on the 30th-floor helipad at the Zorlu Center, Istanbul.