Show Your Work

On the day that Jake visited, Cushing students were designing their dream homes before moving on to commercial properties. For the projects pictured here, Bob’s architecture students had to pick their favorite fast-food restaurants and fix any problems they thought the restaurant to have. They also had to incorporate corporate branding into their designs.

As their final exam, the students designed a city, pulling two requirements from a hat: the location of the building and the type of building (e.g., post office, shoe store, pharmacy, etc.). They worked in small teams and, in the end, they had to sell Bob on their design. “Cushing students leave here with a better understanding of real-world applications and what design really entails,” Bob says. “I’m not just pulling things from a text book; I’m teaching students how to do real-world things.”

That knowledge certainly benefited Jake, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Roger Williams in December 2014. He’ll complete his master’s degree in the spring of 2016. He’ll go on to an internship and hopes to go into commercial design.