Reports of resumes from members of the award-winning Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) Residential Construction Management Competition (RCMC) team seen flying among builders at a recent meeting of the Home Builders Association (HBA) of Middle Tennessee are not exaggerated.

The HBA of Middle Tennessee invited the team — which placed second in the four-year schools division at the 2011 International Builders’ Show's RCMC — to repeat its award-winning presentation at a recent board of directors meeting.

The association is the sponsor of the NAHB Student Chapter at MTSU.

“The builders were very impressed, and, luckily, the students brought their resumes because the builders were asking for them,” said HBA Executive Vice President John Sheley.

Sheley said that seeing the MTSU team in action clarified for board members how much effort the students put into preparing for the competition every year.

With the 2011 award, MTSU has scored one of the top three places in four out of the last five years. Its team won the competition in 2007.

Kaitlyn Wright, the leader of the MTSU team, said that the evening was a great opportunity for the students — including Brandon Castle, Andrew Ethridge, Maverick Green, Mike Sandman and Jonathan Rowan — to get “real life feedback from professionals who are doing what we are aspiring to do every day, as opposed to an academic audience.”

The students thanked their sponsor for its support with a gift of a DVD of their original RCMC presentation, which they each personally signed, said David Hatfield, the MTSU team’s coach who advises the student chapter along with Duane Vanhook, who also is a professor at MTSU.

Andersen Windows gave each team member a plaque honoring their achievement.

Fifty teams from secondary schools and two-year and four-year colleges and universities from across the U.S. spent hundreds of hours preparing for the RCMC competition.

The students solved a real-life construction management project and presented their solutions to a judging panel of industry experts.

Home Builders Institute (HBI), the workforce development arm of NAHB, administers the NAHB Student Chapters program and the RCMC.

The MTSU team wrote and defended a complete management proposal requesting approval from a group of investors to move forward with a business plan to build a Sedgewick Homes model home complex in rural North Carolina and launch the company’s sales, marketing and construction operations program.

Sedgewick Homes is a member of the Wilkes County HBA.

Sheley said he recommends that all HBAs sponsor an NAHB Student Chapter.

“NAHB Student Chapters provide a pathway into the industry that is not completely based on work experience,” he said.

It enables a builder to hire an entry-level employee who has some foreknowledge and experience within the industry,” Sheley said, adding that many builders from his HBA hire students from the MTSU NAHB Student Chapter year after year.

“This presentation showed the builders what a real resource NAHB Student Chapters can be for their companies,” Sheley said.

The students also appreciate the opportunities belonging to an NAHB Student Chapter brings them — including the invitation to present their award-winning proposal one more time to potential employers.

“Not many students have the opportunity to put themselves in front of a bunch of local industry leaders who could possibly be hiring,” said Wright.

“But more importantly,” he said, “it allowed our local HBA to see why it is so important that we have their sponsorship, because without them, we could not have done what we did.”

For more information about NAHB Student Chapters and RCMC, email Page Browning, or call her at 800-798-7955 x8918.