CSU-Chico Students Provide Demonstration of Alcatraz Work at ASCC Conference

The Chico State CIM summer field school was represented at the American Society of Concrete Contractor's (ASCC) National Conference in Salt Lake City. At the Decorative

Concrete Council's outdoor display area, CIM students and Alcatraz interns Trevor Prater and Bryan James created a replica of a staircase they repaired on Alcatraz Island and demonstrated various standard and creative techniques they used on Alcatraz to match the colors and textures of 100-year-old, bay-weathered concrete.

Shellie Rigsby of Acanthus, Inc., a decorative concrete staining firm in Dallas, and Clark Branam of Scofield served as the student advisors for the project and were the leaders of the decorative aspects of the field school during the summer of 2010. By preparing the entire demonstration on site, Prater and James were able to create a live demonstration throughout the three day conference. The repair demonstration strongly correlated with the sustainable theme of ASCC's Decorative Concrete Council display area, as the nature of both historic concrete repair and the Alcatraz internship requires a focus on concrete durability and restoration rather than demolition by selectively repairing only problem areas and minimizing waste.

The ten-week-long Chico State CIM summer field school served as an internship for five Chico State CIM students, completing over 2,000 hours of cumulative work on the infamous prison grounds and highlighting many unique features the bachelor of science degree encompasses. It was an industry-supported pilot project designed to engage CIM students in managing and performing the evaluation, estimating, repair, and preservation of concrete structures while working outside of the technical parameters of a classroom. The field school is planned to continue in future summers providing the opportunity for many more CIM students to gain valuable field experience.

Chico Students Participate in Two Day Field Trip

Students from the Concrete Repair Class participated in a two day field trip to the San Francisco Bay Area in October. On the morning of the first day, the students worked with Robert Trout of the Lily Corporation (Robert traveled from the east coast expressly to work with the students) to prepare a site in the Presidio for field training in epoxy crack injection. Later that day, the group toured Harris Rebar's Livermore plant. That same day, they traveled back to Oakland to participate in a behind-the-scenes tour of the Caldecott Tunnel construction project complete with ongoing large-scale drilling and shotcrete application. Early the next morning, the students worked with Mr. Trout to epoxy inject the prepared crack and clean the site. The remainder of the day was spent on Alcatraz Island learning about concrete deterioration and viewing the work completed by their classmates during the 2010 summer field school.

Chico State Patron News

We are proud to announce that the Chico State CIM program is growing and getting better every day!  It is an undertaking we have done right, and it is already paying off dividends with highly qualified, motivated graduates that are working in our industry.  All 14 of last year's graduates are placed, and we believe we will have 16-18 graduates available after graduation in May. 

This month, we celebrate the "5th Anniversary" of the Chico State CIM Patron's group and our donations have supported operational costs establishing the program. We have enhanced it by providing scholarships to all qualified students, funds for students to travel to and participate in industry meetings and trade shows, and purchased equipment for our concrete lab.  We have also sponsored summer field schools at Pointe du Hoc, and on Alcatraz Island that have been a tremendous success by incorporating the "learn by doing" and "hands on" approach to learning about our products.  Everyone should be proud of our accomplishments and successes so far, and we are still in our formative years. Next year is important because we are completing all the requirements for permanent status in the California State University system. 

Finally, we had good news from Dean Mike Ward! He informed us that we now have dedicated office and classroom space that we can call our own.  Our plan is to convert this space into a high-tech learning center that will have electronic media support for distant learning applications. We will be able to conduct and participate in lectures with experts in their fields from anywhere in the world.