Female Construction Majors Build Bridge on SUNY Delhi Campus

This article was originally published on the front page of The Walton Reporter on 5/22/13.

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Female Construction Majors Build Bridge on SUNY Delhi Campus

By Cori O'Connor

DELHI —Six female SUNY Delhi students, Krista McCabe, Alex Rose, Jenna Singer, Helen Caster, Emily Gadbois and Jesse Jacob built a 24-foot bridge to cross "Lake Addison" outside of the Applied Tech buildings at SUNY Delhi and set it in place on Tuesday.

The women, four of whom major in architecture (McCabe, Rose, Singer, and Caster) and two of whom major in construction management (Gadbois and Jacob) completed the project in their spare time. They were supervised and instructed by Floyd Vogt, professor of construction and technology at SUNY Delhi. "I'm here to answer questions, inspire, guide, expedite wherever I can," Vogt said.



This bridge, built by female students in the architectural and building trades programs at SUNY Delhi, was lifted into place over a small waterway on the campus on Tuesday morning. photo by Cori O'Connor.


They built the bridge to express the female presence in the overwhelmingly male majors. "Our numbers are growing in the younger classes, we want to show them that we can do anything," Rose said. The women are also interested in forming a sorority on campus.

Vogt had thought for a while that he'd like to build a bridge over "Lake Addison" but it wasn't until the women approached him in search of a project that they decided to do it. Singer and Vogt designed the double arch bridge with a sunburst detail and they began building in April. The women estimated that between designing, gathering supplies, and building, the project took between 30 and 40 hours.

"I'm leaving here, so I'm definitely glad I did this before I left," Caster said. "Doing this and having it be our own separate thing was very special."

Vogt explained that his favorite part of the project was working with the women and he noted that their skill level is equal to that of the men he works with. "It was a matter of this is how we do it and then some of them would come and take tools right out of my hand. So once they saw how to do it they did it," he said.

"This was probably the highlight of my semester," said Rose. "It was something fun to do outside of class with close friends and it was something we weren't going to get graded on, so there wasn't a lot of pressure. But it was a pressure for our own goal, sort of."

"It was nice to have something tangible to finish the year out," said Jacob, a resident of Walton and a 2011 graduate of Walton Central School.