 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Lessons learned
Emmer follows long road to the classroom
 |
Emmer |
When he was 18, Michael Emmer thought he was done with school for good.
“I didn’t know if I wanted to go to college or what I wanted to do with my life, so I felt joining the Army was a good option,” said Emmer, assistant professor and construction management program director at the Milwaukee School of Engineering.
He didn’t realize it at the time, but joining the Army was his first step toward a career in academics.
In 1977, two years into being a reserve in the Army, Emmer needed a job. He joined CG Schmidt Inc., Milwaukee, as a laborer and began what would become a nearly 20-year career with the contractor and Army.
During his time with CG Schmidt, Emmer said, he realized he needed a college degree if he wanted to continue moving up in the company. So, in 1996, he enrolled in the undergraduate construction management program at the MSOE. A year later, he retired from the Army and left his position as senior superintendent and project manager with CG Schmidt.
Michael EmmerAge: 49 Home: Bayside and grew up in Hartford Family: Married with five adult children Favorite childhood memory: “Going down to Iowa to work on my uncle’s farm during the summers. It was a lot of fun — we’d go to the county fairs and made money too.” Favorite place to visit: “Probably England. I’ve been there four or five times. Or maybe Germany. In the states, Las Vegas. That’s where my mom and sister live.” Musical interests: Classical, jazz and older rock music Hobbies: Hiking, mountain biking, golfing, traveling and skiing |
Shortly after that, he chose to keep the changes coming, and he packed up and moved to Boston, transferring from the MSOE to Boston’s Wentworth Institute of Technology in the process. He graduated from Wentworth’s construction management program in 2002, picked up a part-time teaching job there and started working toward his master’s degree through a distance-learning program at Clemson University in South Carolina.
“It was difficult,” Emmer said. “Time management was hard, and I was a single dad at the time.”
But Emmer never got a chance to settle into his busy life. An assistant professor position opened up at the MSOE, and, seeing a chance to teach full time, Emmer took the job and moved back to Milwaukee in 2003.
In the last four years with the MSOE, Emmer took an active role in his department as well as with the school’s Architecture, Engineering and Construction Management Commercial Team. Under his guidance, the team won three consecutive national championships.
The American Council of Construction Education, Emmer said, places the MSOE’s 140-student, construction-management program in the nation’s top five out of 60 accredited programs. While the program is strong, he said, the field as a whole needs more recognition “We don’t have the accreditation that architectural engineering has, but we’re getting there,” he said.
And while Emmer strives to bolster the field, he continues to stay focused on his own education. He started working on his doctorate in 2004 through the M.E. Rinker Sr. School of Building Construction at the University of Florida-Gainesville and, in 2006, was chosen as the recipient of the Rinker Scholar Award, which is to schools of construction what the Rhodes Scholar Award is to studies at the University of Oxford in England.
Emmer said he will take a sabbatical during the next school year to complete the program while continuing to teach online classes at the MSOE. He said he hopes that when he returns to the MSOE, the school will have solidified plans for a master’s program in construction management to be headed by Emmer.
- Calie Johnson