Classes had already ended in May when the students from Heidi Bulich’s spring RDEV250/ARCH271 class — People, Planet, and Profit: Building Sustainable Places — found out that a minor in real estate development had officially been approved, Bulich said.
Bulich, director of the real estate development and construction project minors, taught the prerequisite class for this minor to about 120 students in spring of 2016, not knowing whether the minor would get approval.
“There was a lot of excitement and interest in the class for the minor,” Bulich said.
Fall 2016 is the first semester in which the University of Maryland is offering the real estate development minor. The university Senate committee for Programs, Curricula and Courses approved the proposal May 6, and the office of the provost announced the change in a May 19 memo.
Bulich said a small but consistent number of undergraduate students had been asking to take real estate classes at the graduate level, while workers in the real estate industry had also been advocating for the minor.
Senior economics major Richard Adjou-Moumouni said he has always been interested in real estate and declared the minor this summer.
“I’m a fan of the investment side of things,” he said. “I wanted to go into business for myself one day, hopefully as a developer, so I thought this would be the best fit just to get some foundational knowledge on top of my own research.”
Adjou-Moumouni also said he is hoping to be able to network with people already working in the field.
As of Tuesday, 22 students have expressed interest in the interdisciplinary minor, Bulich said, and she has met with all of them. In spring 2016, the prerequisite class had students from business, engineering, computer science, government and politics and Chinese, among other majors, according to a university memo from the provost’s office.
“Real estate is such a multi-faceted industry,” said junior accounting major Donovan Delore, who declared the minor at the beginning of this semester. “You need people with artistic skills, business skills, all kinds of different skills. … Before this minor, there wasn’t really a way for people who studied business or even computer science to study real estate.”
John and Karen Colvin, supporters of this university’s master’s in real estate development program, donated to the university in March 2015 to support the establishment of two minors: construction management and real estate development, according to the memo from the provost’s office. The university began offering construction management courses in fall 2015.
The real estate development minor emphasizes community building and entrepreneurship, which are both large components of real estate, Bulich said, as well as sustainable design and how it can be implemented in the U.S. and worldwide.
Students are required to complete ARCH271/RDEV250 with a C- or better before declaring the minor, Bulich said. Once they’ve declared the minor, students have to take RDEV270, 350 and 450, as well as one elective from selected departments, including landscape architecture, business and communications.
If students from this minor decide to pursue a master’s degree in real estate development, nine credits from the minor will apply to their master’s.
“I’d love to own my own real estate company one day,” Delore said. “This course really allows me to get the experience and see what goes into doing something like that.”
Professors in many of these classes, Delore said, either currently or formerly work in some facet of the real estate industry, which allows for different perspectives on the subject matter.
