USD Magazine, Winter 2003

LindaVista homeowner Eleanor Sennett says she cries when she thinks about the work USD students put into renovating her house.

she got used to cold winter drafts. Rotted riles left a leaky mess in her bathroom, and the driveway consisted of wooden planks on half-dead grass. She never realized that a broken gas line under the house could have led to an explosive disaster. "I kept chinking, someday I'd be able to fix my little house," Sennett says. "This house means so much to me, and I can't believe everything these kids were able to do. If I lived to be 110, I co uldn't have done this much on my own ." The house got a new driveway, new win– dows and fram ing, a fresh coat of paint, new srncco, a decorative rock wall , a walkway, landscaping and a backyard gazebo. Students painted every room, installed a heater, replaced the bathroom tile, installed new kitchen cabinets, built a pantry, replaced the carpeting, renovated closets, laid wood flooring and purchased a new stove and stackable washer and dryer. The lessons weren't wasted on Brunetto, a data program manager for a San Diego soft– ware company. "In the software industry, people are noto– rious for being late and actually plan for it," Brunetto says. "I was always cavalier about schedu les, assuming I could fall back on time extensions, but this experience caught me discipline." His professor says the lessons are tough, but invaluable. "Sometimes you learn more from mis– takes," says Withers, who introduced the project in 1998. "In the end, students feel tired and frustrated, but also amazed that they did something so out of their nature and changed a life. Thar's the power of this co urse."

Prof Preaches Management Lessons Through Renovation Project

by Krystn Shrieve T hey took classes on installing drywall, framing windows and laying rile. T hey raised nearly $35,000 in monetary and in– kind contributions. And they meticulously planned their schedules to the minute. But nothing prepared graduate students in business Professor Barbara Withers' project management course - who planned for months to renovate a 60-year-old house in four days - for the way her classroom les– sons came to life in the real wo rld. Withers drilled her students so often about the need for proper planning and the consequences of not charting contingencies that the nonstop warnings lost their impact. Her words came back full force, however, when the class arrived in the pouring rain to find the house they expected to be empty wasn't packed. And that their naive rain con– tingency - simply to work inside - didn't take into consideration that 20 students and 60 volunteers wo uldn't fit in an 800-square– foor home. "You should have seen us," says class proj– ect manager Stephen Brunetto. "It's one thing to make a contingency plan and another thing to stand in the rain wondering what

the heck you're going to do. I learned that the planning needs to be right to make things run smooth ly." T he annual semester-long assignment, called The Thanksgiving Project, teaches stu– dents the relationship between the hammer– and-nail side of renovating a home and the behind-the-scenes budgets, contracts and schedules chat make it possible. Students broke into teams charged with landscaping, drywall and painting, rile and flooring, electricity, carpentry, windows and exterior work. In the end, they worked a miracle. Eleanor Sennett, 58, has lived in the two– bedroom, one-bath Linda Vista home, a few miles from campus, since the third grade. The single mother, who raised three children on modest means, began cooking her meals on a hot plate when her stove broke five years ago. After 20 years without a heater,

Home Depot classes and do-it-yourself videos turned these students into fix-it fanatics.

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W I NTER 2003