Videos Highlight the Capstone Course; Clients for Future Projects Sought
The Cornell Program in Real Estate (PRE) recently created two videos demonstrating the professional quality work generated by students in the Real Estate Project Workshop, a second-year course serving as the PRE’s “Capstone Course.” The PRE will use these videos to market the course to potential clients and to recruit prospective PRE students. The videos emphasize the “win-win” aspects of the course for participating companies and PRE students.
Offered to students in the second year of their two-year master degree program, the Capstone Course focuses students’ attention on a specific commercial development project during the spring semester. In recent years, under the leadership of Professor Mark Foerster, the C. Bradley Olson Real Estate Faculty Fellow, the course has focused on projects in the DC Metro/Northern Virginia areas and involved Capstone Clients Macerich and Boston Properties.
By participating in the course, PRE students provided these and other Capstone Clients comprehensive research and analysis of their development sites, professional reports, and a range of new ideas to consider for future development. PRE student teams are guided through the project by Professor Foerster and other collaborating faculty. Typically, Capstone Clients provide basic information about their site and guidance on certain financial assumptions, but otherwise make a limited commitment of time to the project and make no financial contribution. With students making a total time commitment of roughly 4,000 hours, the Real Estate Project Workshop has consistently delivered value to Capstone Clients.
“We greatly appreciate our participating client’s time, and the opportunity that they give us to study their site,” said Professor Foerster. He added that “in working on a real-world project, for a real client, students have the opportunity to work in teams to use both their creativity and practical skills, and ultimately to present their recommendations to the Client with ideas about how the Client might develop its site.”
Professor David Funk, Director of the Program in Real Estate, observed that “the quality of the work is really phenomenal. I have gotten feedback from some very sophisticated people who have been Capstone Clients that they have been ‘blown away’ by our students’ work.” He added that the videos “aim to provide transparency into the Program in Real Estate experience” and help prospective students to make an informed decision. “We hope that (the videos) can provide prospective students and employers alike with a glimpse into the professional work that Cornell graduates are capable of producing at the end of their time in the Program in Real Estate.”
Professor Foerster is working on lining up a Capstone Client and study site for the 2010 Spring Semester. For more information on how to become a Capstone Client for the Spring 2010 Real Estate Project Workshop, or in future semesters, please contact Professor Mark Foerster (585) 419-9771, mfoerster@northerncapital.net, or Professor David Funk, Director, Program in Real Estate (607) 255-3291, dfunk@cornell.edu.
The new Capstone Course videos can be found on the PRE’s website (http://www.realestate.cornell.edu) using the “Academics” and “Curriculum” tabs, or by accessing the following links:
1. http://realestate.cornell.edu/index.php/academics/curriculum/project_workshop -and
2. http://realestate.cornell.edu/index.php/academics/curriculum/project_workshop/becoming_a_sponsor_of_the_capstone_class