​More than 120 Students in five classrooms within the Kent Intermediate School District received first-hand experience in the architecture and engineering design field this past semester.

Classes from Northview Public Schools, Godwin Heights Public Schools, All Saint Academy, and Rockford Public Schools participated in a collaborative project to explore the design process. Each classroom was assigned a design discipline; All Saints Academy (architecture), Rockford High School (mechanical engineering), Godwin Heights High School (electrical engineering) and two classes at Northview High School (interior design and landscape architecture) teamed together to design a new home.
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Each classroom was divided into student teams, and the teams from each school worked together across the district to create a final project with information from each discipline. The classes were led by architects, engineers, and interior designers from three local firms who talked them through the design process and how to collaborate with classes from the other schools.  

Adam Doubblestein, West Michigan Chapter President of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), developed the idea for this project as part of the upcoming regional conference he is chairing. “As the Region V Annual Conference is being hosted in Grand Rapids this year, I wanted to give back to the community,” said Doubblestein. “The architecture and engineering design field can seem very daunting, so being able to introduce students to these design fields and to include multiple schools in the district seemed like the perfect opportunity for engagement.  Collectively, our West Michigan ASHRAE chapter wanted to raise the awareness of creative, design-oriented career paths for students within our community.”
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The goal of this project was to expose students to various architecture and engineering design fields and to teach them how a real-life collaborative design process works, with each discipline relying on the others to complete the final project.  Now completed, there is a framework of lesson plans and curriculum established that can be replicated with future classrooms.

The classroom volunteers invested over 320 hours in total.  Our team included Landscape Architect, Craig Newhouse, LLA, Interior Designers Angela Bowles and Heather Harrington, and Electrical Engineer Greg Terrell from TowerPinkster, Engineers Jim Merlino, PE, and James Harrison Jr., PE from GMB Architecture + Engineering, and Architect Greg Koenig, AIA, from Integrated Design Solutions.
Students in the Creative Problem-Solving class at Northview High School, which covered the interior design portion of the project, said they were surprised by the level of integration required by interior design and the electrical engineers.

One student said, “I used to think Interior Design was just couches and rugs. I was surprised when we had to layout the house to be able to get electricity to where it could support our design.”
 Students were also impacted by the similarities between design and their future careers.
Another student said, “I want to be a music producer, and I can see how interior design goes along with designing music. Like a color palette, you have to figure out a sound palette. You have to equalize every sound, so they fit together. That translates to design because you have to know what goes together and how to create an appeal.”

At the end of the project, student teams were evaluated by their peers and a panel of judges for their overall achievement in design. Students who excelled in their disciplines will present their designs at the ASHRAE Region V conference in Grand Rapids this July 26, 2019. In addition to the student presentations, there will be a student + professional panel discussion.  All educators in West Michigan are welcome and encouraged to attend.  Please contact Adam Doubblestein for more information. ​

It all started in Atlanta during the last ASHRAE Winter meeting, at a table while sipping dry martinis with blue cheese stuffed olives. My fellow Region II RVC’s and I were doing an impromptu brain storming session on how to overcome the challenges of membership decrease seen in the past years. All grassroots committees are affected by this, so my CTTC, GAC and RP counterparts started discussing about how we could unite our efforts to boosts recruitment and retention. My RP colleague started to talk about a sense of community and welcome that is almost palpable when he attends an ASHRAE event. This was the starting point of my winter (and spring for that matter) pondering: what if there was such a thing as the ‘’ASHRAE feeling’’? Indeed, we all felt it, and still feel it when we attend a monthly dinner. That is partly why we became members in the first place and renew year after year. You know, that sense of belonging, of being among peers who understand your day-to-day, of being able to talk about an issue with a fellow member and getting constructive feedback or of blowing off steam about a problem and finding the oh-so welcoming nod meaning “I hear you”. There is also an atmosphere of camaraderie at monthly dinners, of a laid back, stress-free yet formative evening out. During the past two years, I was fortunate to visit six chapters in my region, and I can confirm that I had the ‘’ASHRAE feeling’’ at each event. It was there, whether in Toronto or Quebec City, London, Hamilton or Ottawa. At each one of these events, I had the same ‘’ASHRAE feeling’’ that I like so much in my home chapter.

​So, can letting potential members have a taste of that ‘’ASHRAE feeling’’ make them want to become members? I honestly think so. So, as other chapters do in Region II, I encourage you to get people to your monthly dinners so that they too can get to enjoy what you, as a member and volunteer, like so much about this Society. I believe that we have the tools to reach out to future members already in our pockets: great venues, conference subjects that catch people’s attention, eye-catching advertisement of your dinner events and, most importantly, dedicated and dynamic volunteers. With all this, you will be able to share the ‘’ASHRAE feeling’’.