Business School Joining with Habitat for Humanity
By Will Johnson

You wouldn’t expect Carolina students to be putting up shingles at 8 a.m. But business school students are waking up bright and early to work on a special project.

The Kenan-Flagler Business School has teamed up with Habitat for Humanity to construct a home for the Shah family. The project called “The House that Kenan-Flagler Built” began in early October. It involves numerous business school students and faculty each weekend.

Manager Richard Turlington enjoys building this home with these students.

“They seem to be very good at taking direction and also very patient,” Turlington said. “Every time I have to leave them alone for a while, they are very good at networking with each other and not having any trouble just sitting there.”

While business school may be difficult, these students aren’t having a hard time constructing this house. All around the house, the group is painting the newly installed siding, cutting pieces of wood and arranging bricks for the bricklayers.

One junior working on the site said he enjoys the experience: “It’s fun building things and watching something getting created as you work on it and also just helping people out.”

Event organizer and marketing chairwoman Jenn Graham learned today how to lay shingles. She believes the project has given her an outlet for her business skills.

“I was a part of marketing, doing the marketing for this, getting everybody involved with PR and having people come out here and really get to see how the school is giving back to the communities,” Graham said.

Inspectors will come later in the month to give the green light for completing the inside of the house. Even though these students already have plenty of business homework to deal with, they still manage to work in some volunteer time into their “weekend plans.”