Pellissippi State Community College students collaborating to create shipping container tiny home

Pellissippi State Community College students are at work turning a shipping container into a liveable tiny home, thanks to a grant the school’s Interior Design Technology program received in 2024. The experiential learning opportunity is giving students from a dozen training programs the chance to collaborate with their peers and others while they work to turn the metal container into a house.

According to an article on Pellissippi State Community College’s website, Associate Professor of Interior Design Technology Julie Shubzda was quoted as saying of the project, “To actually see the building of the home is just very, very exciting for us. Experiential learning has been our goal, and we’re already seeing the reward of it. When our students toured the container, they could literally lay on the floor to see where the bed or bathtub would go, because it’s scaled to actual size. There's no substitute for actually being in the construction space itself.”

Shubzda is leading the project alongside Associate Professor Diane Riley. The two are overseeing the training program students as they complete their pieces of the project. The students working on the shipping container home are enrolled in programs like Animation, Architectural Design Technology, Interior Design Technology, Civil and Construction Engineering Technology, Electrical Engineering Technology, Mechanical Engineering Technology, Welding Technology, Audio Production Technology, Design for Web and Print, Photography, Video Production Technology, and Web Technology.

The most recent work done on the project is the installation of window frames by students in the Welding Technology program. Windows have been donated for the tiny house to fill the frames created by the welding students. Next, insulation will be installed, and then electrical and plumbing will be taken care of by students in those programs.

Max Coffin, a welding student, explained the benefits he and his fellow students are receiving from taking part in the project. He said, “There’s no shortage of applied learning for us, but the real special experience that we get with this is being able to go out to the field. And that's an important skill in this line of work. Not everybody gets the opportunity to learn how to be flexible and how to problem solve. Especially when you have limited resources. It's a great lesson in fieldwork and organization.”

Riley said, “It may look like nothing’s been happening. but students have been out here doing calculations. If you're in a drafting studio and you have a student that measures wrong, you just circle it and say, ‘fix it.’ Here, if you get it wrong, the hole is not the right size. So this experience is invaluable for communicating the importance of precision.”

For more information about Pellissippi State Community College, visit the school’s website.