Lab, job market driving eye-popping increase in UW-Platteville construction management enrollment

"It's not like a lecture where you just sit and take notes. You're really getting into it. We do everything." 

- UW-Platteville construction management major Kira Goldbach

Enrollment in UW-Platteville's construction management program has grown nearly sevenfold since its inception thanks to the university's hands-on building laboratory and a wide-open job market. 

In the seven years since the construction management major was created, the number of students has skyrocketed from 60 to 400 this semester, a jaw-dropping increase of 566 percent. Helping drive that growth this year is 140 first-year and transfer students, the largest incoming class yet, said program coordinator Gretchen Bockenhauer.

"This is huge for our program," Bockenhauer said. "If you were to Google construction management, usually Platteville comes to the top."

Prior to 2020, the Department of Applied Engineering Technology Management offered construction management -- the art of supervising residential, commercial and infrastructure projects -- as an emphasis within the industrial technology ...