Twenty-five addresses — that’s how you can measure the impact of this class.
Each of these addresses represents a house designed by Ball State students for nonprofits to support local residents.
Rehabilitating Houses, an immersive learning class consisting of architecture, interior design and construction management majors, has partnered with Habitat for Humanity for six years and most recently Muncie Mission to renovate and design houses.
This semester, the class is collaborating with Muncie Mission to create two different designs for duplexes that will serve as transitional housing for residents at the mission.
“The stresses of life, associated with paying your rent on time, paying your utilities on time and preparing a meal would affect them. Before long they would lose their apartment, they would lose their job and be right back in the Mission,” said Muncie Mission Executive Director Frank Baldwin. “This provides them with their own independent housing, but they have the support of Muncie Mission.”
Kelsie Kittredge, a student in the class, said the class just wants to make the houses blend in to the neighborhood.
“We want to keep it realistic and have basic needs, but also make it feel comfortable and inviting,” Kittredge, a senior interior design major, said. “I am able to use my skills in school to better someone’s life and to make things a little bit easier for them.”
The designs for the duplexes are done for free by the class, said course adviser and instructor of construction management Janet Fick.
“This is something these companies don’t have funding for. We are a financial benefit for them,” Fick said. “It’s beneficial to know just how much we are helping Muncie Mission. It really makes you feel like you are contributing back to your community.”
While this is the first time Fick has worked with Muncie Mission, her immersive learning class has worked the community through Habitat for Humanity since 2012.
Fick started the immersive course after she designed a class for Habitat for Humanity independently, pro bono in 2012.
She said she wanted to continue designing for the organization, but needed to teach classes, too. Fick said Habitat for Humanity approached her with an idea that lead to the class.
“[Habitat for Humanity] said to me ‘Can we get the students involved?’ It sounded immersive,” Fick said. “Two weeks before class, I sent out an email asking for students who were interested and I got back 50 responses.”
Fick said the class has taught her a lot about the Muncie community.
“It has been very educational to me, and the students to get out of our academic bubble here and see how other people are actually living,” Fick said. “It has been very eye-opening to all of us to see things that we take for granted that to them there needs are much more basic.”
Fick said when she met with the Habitat for Humanity families that would live in the houses her class designed, she was surprised by what they wanted.
“My college kids were asking a partner family’s daughter what she wanted in her room. They were talking about the windows or the color. The daughter said she wanted a door. She had never had a room with a door in it,” Fick said. “One of my students pounded her fist on the table, ‘You will have a door. You will have a door if I have to put it in myself.’”
While the class has impacted Muncie community, Fick said it has impacted the students, too because the course allows students to create work they can see.
“Knowing that I have worked on something, even something as small as a condo it is super awesome to see I have made some sort of an impact on the community,” said Erin Powichroski, senior interior design major, who is currently in the class. “I really hope to come back and see the house someday.”
For Colten Showalter, junior construction management major, the class is a way to make an impact on his hometown.
“There is a lot of nastiness about Muncie. A lot of stuff that is ran down that needs attention. That is ran down and boarded up,” Showalter said. “Actually building new houses is providing for people and giving the community a nice look.”
Contact Liz Rieth with comments at ejrieth@bsu.edu or on Twitter at @liz_rieth.
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