Cathie Lavis has taught Horticulture 550, a course designed to teach students to install professional-grade irrigation systems, at K-State for 15 years. After becoming the first college professor to collaborate with the Irrigation Association, recognized as the national authority on the subject, while developing her curriculum, Lavis spent two years teaching the class entirely in an indoor lab.
“After two years of being inside, I went to my department head, and I said, ‘I just can’t do this anymore,’” Lavis said. “‘I have to get these kids out in the field.’”
Lavis, an associate professor, began to devise a plan to put her class to work outside the lab. She contacted local contractors, offering her students as manual laborers to install a system for an existing client. Lavis initially faced hesitation from university administrators, who feared that aligning a class with a single contractor could alienate their competitors.
“We found a way around that problem,” Lavis said. “We use a different company every year, and after the project is done, whichever company sends a bill to the client for all labor and components.”
According to Lavis, the client is informed beforehand that the area where the system is installed will be “torn up” for six to eight weeks to allow the work to be done during class time. The client pays a majority of the total bill to the contractor, with 15 percent set aside for Lavis’ teaching account to cover parts and labor.
This semester’s system was installed at the K-State Gardens facility north of Call Hall. Typically, Lavis said, the system is installed at a location off campus, but several factors influenced her decision to stay on campus this year.
In March, K-State hosted PLANET Student Career Days, a three-day, industry-sponsored landscaping competition. According to Lavis, all leftover supplies are left with the host school.
“We had irrigation heads, we had pallets of pavers,” she said. “We had so much stuff left over from PLANET it wasn’t even funny.”
Lavis also said that the director of K-State Gardens has wanted an irrigation system for years. The system will be used to water turf, several plant beds and a putting green installed by a golf course class to practice mowing techniques.
According to Andrew McNeive, senior in horticulture and landscape design, installing the system was hard work, but he enjoyed the class.
“We’ve been out here since August, the second week of school,” said McNeive, joking that his class with seven students, as opposed to Lavis’ other class with 20, did most of the hard work. “We like to have fun out here.”
Mike Fitzgerald, senior in landscape management and horticulture, said it was interesting to watch the system develop.
“There was nothing here when we started,” he said. “We tapped in to the main water line, and next thing you know, we have a full irrigation system in.”
Lavis said that water management is one of the subjects she emphasizes most in her class.
“It’s very, very important,” she said. “I show them all the products in our industry designed to conserve water.”
Lavis also noted the importance of her students diagnosing problems within the system and fixing them on their own.
“That’s the beauty of it,” she said. “When a problem comes up, and they think about it, and the light comes on. It’s beautiful to watch.”
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